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PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS 

IN THE LIGHT OF 

VITAL ORGANIZATION 



BY 



EDMUND MONTGOMERY 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Gbe "Knickerbocker press 

1907 



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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Copies Received 

•JAN 30 1907 

Copyright Entry 

LASS / :.iNo. 



Copyright Effry 
ASS A xXc.,No. 

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COPY B. 



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Copyright, 1907 

BY 

EDMUND MONTGOMERY 



i 



CONTENTS 

" PART I 
PHILOSOPHICAL SURVEY 

PAGB 

I. Introduction ... i 

II. Some Fundamental Problems Awaiting Solution. 15 

(1) Substantiality r5 

(2) Identity . 32 

(3) Causation or Actuating Power 38 

(4) The Problem of an External World ... 50 

(5) Universals and Particulars ........ 51 

(6) Innate Faculties or Dispositions 55 

(7) Subject and Object 56 

III. The Immediate Source of All Knowledge .... 61 

IV. The Individual Microcosm 71 

V. The Epistemological Dilemma 85 

VI. The Epistemological Standpoint 97 

VII. Naturalistic Implications 124 

VIII. Biological Facts Underlying Philosophical Prob- 
lems 157 

PART II 

BIOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS 

I. Introduction 175 

II. Substantiality 1S0 

III. Causation 238 

IV. Substantiality and Causation i\ Physical Science 265 
V. How Mechanical Necessity Becomes Overruled in 

Nature 297 

VI. The Living Substance as Sensori— Motob Agent. 309 

VII. Sentiency and Purposive Movements 333 

VIII. Teleology in Nature 383 

IX. Biological Foundations ok Rational and Ethical 

Conduct 400 



PART I 
PHILOSOPHICAL SURVEY 






PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS 



I. INTRODUCTION 

Pondering philosophical questions from the stand- 
point of natural science, the present writer has during 
a lifetime of research become convinced that some of 
the principal standing problems which have vexed 
ancient and modern thinkers may find their more or 
less complete solution by having recourse in their 
interpretation to facts of vital organization. 

What is consciously realized as nature takes, undeni- 
ably, place in living beings, as an outcome of their 
peculiar constitution and its inherent faculties. It 
seems, therefore, prima facie probable that the direct 
way to gain a proximate understanding of what is 
thus consciously revealed as nature is to show by what 
means of vital organization and functional activity 
such conscious revelation becomes possible. 

It has lately been rendered obvious, even to natur- 
alistic thinkers, that what we consciously experience 
as nature cannot be the mere outcome of atomic 
mechanics, that the materialistic and mechanical 
hypotheses are incompetent to account for all that 
takes place in nature ; incompetent, in truth, adequately 
to account for any natural occurrence, whether physical 
or psychical. 

On the strength of this widely acknowledged insuffi- 
ciency of the materialistic hypothesis, disclosed by 



i Philosophical Survey 

natural science itself, scientists have on their side 
substituted for the assumption of material atoms that 
of sensorial atoms, or that of other kinds of physical 
units. While, on their side, conceptual thinkers have 
not failed to renew their dialectic onslaughts against 
all manner of Naturalism. They still persist in trying 
to show that what is intuitively believed to be the 
external world has no self -subsisting reality; that, on 
close examination, it altogether dissolves into pure 
ideal consistency. They profess to have positively 
disproved as wholly irrational the common -sense con- 
viction that perceptible nature exists independently of 
being perceived. And they are confident of having 
established as final truth that what is called nature 
is, all in all, a psychical manifestation, or a mere 
product or outcome of absolute Reason or Spirit. 
Something like neo-Platonism has thus once more 
become the creed of many leading philosophers, as has 
repeatedly been the case after periods of materialistic 
or sensualistic interpretations. 

From the vantage ground of our present science it is, 
however, not difficult to show that pure Idealism of 
whatever kind is incapable of making sense out of 
mere ideal facts of experience; incapable of giving a 
rationally consistent account of natural phenomena 
without surreptitiously introducing naturalistic impli- 
cations in its world-construction or world-interpre- 
tation. The content of our conscious experience is 
found to yield in itself no rational meaning whatever. 
It gains such solely through its implied reference to a 
realm of extra-conscious, genuinely naturalistic exis- 
tents. This rather dogmatically sounding assertion 
will be amply justified in the course of this treatise. 

The reason why pure Idealism has nevertheless at 



Introduction 3 

times gained philosophical ascendency, and that 
Naturalism has so persistently resisted consistent 
philosophical formulation, has been chiefly due to the 
incompetency of the materialistic hypothesis. It will 
be found quite otherwise when Naturalism is no 
longer based on atomic mechanics, or on aggregated 
units of any sort, but on an epistemological interpre- 
tation of biological occurrences taking place in unitary 
organic beings. On such a foundation the attempt 
shall here be made to prove that Idealism is utterly 
impotent to account for reality, and that Naturalism, 
on the contrary, affords a rational and consistent 
interpretation of actual experience, and therewith of 
nature itself. 

Until recently mathematical and mechanical con- 
ceptions have dominated not only natural science, but 
also philosophical speculation. The origin, motion, 
change, order, and concatenation of that which appears 
irrtime and space, as therein perceived and conceived, 
has most readily offered itself as subject matter for 
philosophical interpretation, and it lay near to attempt 
such interpretation in immediate and essential relation 
to the media in which the appearances arise. That 
which appears was thus considered to have its real 
being, and to suffer its real changes in time and space ; 
or to be special determinations of these all-including 
media, such as motion, rest, and number, or succession, 
coexistence, and quantity. 

Now, as everything experienced in nature is found 
to be subject to change, and is, moreover, involved in 
the perpetual flux of time ; and as amid all this percepti- 
ble change and evanescence something nevertheless 
permanently abides, something which by dint of its 
apprehended continuity and identity imparts signifi- 



4 Philosophical Survey 

cance to the transitory manifold, it lay in the course 
of thought that the principal philosophical endeavor 
was directed towards detecting the real nature and 
meaning of such permanent identical entity. 

What, then, can be the real nature of the permanent 
existent that amid all change and transitoriness 
identically abides? With the solution of this central 
riddle philosophy has mainly busied itself. 

Surveying the problems that in the search after 
true and abiding reality have occupied philosophical 
thinkers, ancient and modern, what perplexing array 
of yet unyielding puzzles have time and space, with 
their shifting content, presented to the ingenuity of 
man for rational solution : — being and becoming ; the 
one and the many ; the immutable and the flowing ; the 
permanent, unitary, substance, subject, or substratum 
and its divers attributes, accidents, properties, or 
modes; the moving or actuating power or force and 
that which is moved or actuated ; the universal and 
the particulars; uniform spatial extension and its 
figured determinations or limitations; all-containing 
consciousness and the meaning of its revelations; 
mental and material or psychical and physical modes 
of appearance and their mutual relation and depen- 
dence ; the supremacy either of intellect or of sense, of 
reason or of will, of quality or of quantity, of mechan- 
ism or of teleology; the significance of normative 
thought as set against contingent experience. 

These are some of the foremost, as yet more or less 
disconnected and unsolved problems, whose attempted 
elucidation has made up, and is still making up, the 
history of our philosophical effort to interpret what 
we experience as nature. 

Among ancient thinkers mathematical conceptions 



Introduction 5 

have sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, 
done essential service in philosophical interpretation. 
In modern times mathematical and mechanical prin- 
ciples and methods have intentionally and conspicu- 
ously guided the thought of most leading philosophers. 
Galileo laid the foundation of scientific mechanics by 
demonstrating the accelerating effect of forces upon 
bodies, which involved the "law of inertia," expres- 
sive of the intrinsic import of ' ' mass ' ' in the motion of 
bodies. Gassendi revived Epicurean atomics, and be- 
fore long the reduction of all physical, indeed of all 
natural occurrences, to atomic mechanics became the 
generally acknowledged aim of exact science. i\nd 
among biologists, as well as physicists, the reduction 
of natural occurrences to measurable quantities, ex- 
pressible in mathematical equations, remains still the 
end aimed at. 

Descartes believed in an out and out mechanical 
construction and operation of extended nature, organic 
structures and functions included. Hobbes attributed 
supreme reality to extension and motion mechani- 
cally actuated, and held methods of mathematical 
computation to be strictly applicable to philosophical 
problems. Spinoza sought to evolve the content of 
his absolute substance in accordance with Euclidean 
methods. The principal philosophical aim of Leib- 
nitz was to harmonize the mechanical interpretation 
of extended nature with the manifestations of unex- 
tended thought. 

Meanwhile, the experimental investigation of natu- 
ral phenomena, fostered by the "Royal Society" 
determined Locke's and his followers' method of 
questioning "Human Understanding." And Newton's 
influence guided Kant not only in his physical but 



6 Philosophical Survey 

also in his philosophical researches. He never relin- 
quished his belief in the rigorous mechanism of nature, 
and mathematics gave him the clue to his "Critique 
of Pure Reason," which he based on the alleged dis- 
covery of the a priori synthetical nature of mathe- 
matical propositions. Natural occurrences were thus, 
in keeping with mathematical and mechanical prin- 
ciples, generally held to take place with absolute neces- 
sity; definite effects following rigorously and wholly 
upon definite causes. 

Now it is evident that if the asserted mechanical 
constitution of nature, with its rigorous concatenation 
of equivalent causes and effects, which in the last in- 
stance become reduced to redistribution of material 
particles through imparted and received motion; if 
this prevalent view were really a true and adequate 
explanation of natural occurrences; nay, if it were 
merely conclusively proved to be true that whatever 
is seen to occur at a certain moment is the necessitated 
and fully effected outcome of that which had taken 
place the previous moment; then the inexorable con- 
sequence would be, that we are out and out only con- 
scious automata, wholly involved in a fatalistic drift 
of physical becoming. It will be remembered that 
so eminent a scientist and thinker as Huxley has in 
our own time not hesitated emphatically to advocate 
the doctrine of "conscious automatism." And it is 
clear that the prevalent view known as psychophysi- 
cal Parallelism leads consistently to no other conclu- 
sion If such were the real state of things, all attempts 
at breaking through necessitarian entanglements by 
means of idealistic arguments would amount only to 
inept flights of fancy. It is indeed a fact that, not 
only students of physical phenomena, but also specu- 



Introduction 7 

lative philosophers of the first order, have on the 
strength of this conception of rigorous causation pro- 
mulgated fatalistic interpretations of nature. The 
doctrines of preordination, of determinism, of logical 
necessity, of conceptual evolution, imply, one and all, 
fatalistic conclusions. 

The Cartesians were necessitarians on the psychical 
as well as on the physical side. Descartes himself 
taught that the Deity is the general and predetermining 
cause of all motion in nature. And as, according to 
his view, the thoughts of human beings are super- 
naturally made strictly to coincide with their necessi- 
tated movements, man can be nothing but a conscious 
automaton. Such Spinoza and Leibnitz, in so many 
words, actually declare him to be. With Malebranche 
God is the real source of all efficiency in nature, and 
this involves complete automatism of human thoughts 
and movements. Spinoza's absolute substance deter- 
mines within itself its two attributes of thought and 
extension, and all their accidents and modes, with 
absolute necessity. In the monads of Leibnitz their 
perceptions and apperceptions arise fatalistically pre- 
ordained. 

Kant's elaborate effort to show how the mechani- 
cally necessitated order of nature is coerced from a 
supernatural sphere into paths of moral freedom, 
attempts something wholly irreconcilable. Necessity 
and freedom of whatever kind are radically exclusive 
of each other. What is mechanically necessitated in 
the phenomenal sphere cannot be freely actuated 
in noumenal regions. To transcend these antithetic 
notions of Kant, the outcome on one side of his theo- 
retical, on the other of his practical reason, Fichte 
posited as supreme principle the exclusive autonomy 



8 Philosophical Survey 

of the practical reason, declaring it to be an all-creating 
moral activity, which in its world-construction makes 
no use of external material. In his scheme of creation 
the notion of freedom runs riot. A mere unembodied 
activity, working upon no given material, creates ad 
libitum all existence out of nothing. Yet the unac- 
countable nemesis of a "moral law" is declared to 
drive it nevertheless fatalistically towards a preor- 
dained end or fulfilment. 

Schelling sought to overcome the Kantian dualism 
of freedom and necessity by positing an absolute 
Reason as the unconscious and undifferentiated ground 
of thought and being, of subject and object, identify- 
ing it with all-creating will-power. In this pantheistic 
view, however, no less than in that of Spinoza, there 
is no room open for human self-determination. Hegel 
sought to account for the manifoldness of apparent 
particulars emanating from unitary Being by trans- 
forming Fichte's moral self-determination, and Schell- 
ing' s volitional or conative Pantheism, into a pure 
cognitive Panlogism, wherein human experience con- 
sists only in a more and more complete recognition 
of the self -evolving notions of an absolute Reason or 
Spirit. Logical necessity, excluding as such free deter- 
mination, is making here dialectically for "absolute 
Truth." 

None of these ontological systems, despite ample 
professions of freedom, have really succeeded in over- 
coming the necessitarian or fatalistic view of exist- 
ence, seemingly bound up with our way of thinking, 
whether contemplating the physical or the psychical 
aspect of nature. It can, nevertheless, be safely pre- 
dicted, that thought will never relinquish the effort 
to find a valid way to break loose from the fatalistic 



Introduction 9 

fetters. But it has to be admitted that, so long as the 
necessitarian contention of natural science cannot in 
its own field be proved to have been a mistaken inter- 
pretation, it will stand an impregnable bulwark against 
all attempts at philosophically justifying free human 
self-determination. The vast array of perceptible and 
always verifiable facts of physical nature can nowise 
be argued out of existence, or mentally dissolved into 
nonentity by any sort of idealistic dialectics. What- 
ever is asserted to the contrary, it is certain that no 
manner of thought has ever succeeded in assimilating 
into itself, and causing to vanish into its own invisi- 
bility and intangibility, the sense-revealed things of 
perceptible nature, or succeeded, vice versa, in evolving 
them out of ideal or conceptual latency. 

Ethical conduct, which presupposes free self-deter- 
mination, being a positive, incontestable fact, it is sure 
that, so long as there are scientists and thinkers, human 
existence will be probed until its true nature is laid 
bare, and self-determination, which constitutes the 
most characteristic and essential outcome of human- 
ized life be scientifically and decisively explained as 
resulting from the specific vital constitution of human 
nature. 

Adequate criticism fails to detect that, by following 
the bent of mathematical and mechanical principles, 
even the most illustrious interpreters of nature have 
made essential headway in answering the perennial 
questions that have formed the chief subject matter 
of ancient and modern philosophy. Xor have these 
questions been solved by such thinkers as have 
attempted to construct nature by aggregation or com- 
bination of sensorial elements or of monadic units. 
Nor, on the other hand, have they been solved bv such 



io Philosophical Survey 

Transcendentalists as have sought to evolve experi- 
enced existence from the intelligible or intuitive 
apprehension of the nature of an all-comprising 
Absolute, or from some dialectic system of conceptual 
evolution. In fact, the results attained sufficiently 
show that no method hitherto adopted has sufficed to 
afford an explanation of the problems in question. 
The consequence is that physical and psychical science 
in their most advanced state have come to reduce all 
natural manifestations to fleeting phenomena, arising 
and vanishing as mere appearances in time and space. 
Extreme Phenomenalism, even more extreme than 
that of Protagoras or of Hume, with no demonstrable 
reality underlying it, is undeniably the present con- 
sistent outcome of physics and psychics. 

To evade such pure Nihilism speculative thinkers 
postulate, as underlying and actuating the fleeting 
phenomena, either universal Reason or universal Will 
or universal Energy, or some other substantialized and 
eternalized agency. This, however, is merely to give 
way to the inveterate tendency of elevating into per- 
manent and efficient entities concepts generalized 
from selected groups of experienced phenomena; se- 
lected, in fact, from out the complex of phenomena 
which constitutes our unitary moment of actual 
awareness. 

The power or powers that actuate the phenomenal 
play of appearances, and the abiding matrix whence 
they issue into manifest existence, these permanent 
agencies can certainly not themselves be found in any 
of the transitory and evanescent manifestations, not 
in any of the fleeting modes of conscious awareness. 
And these modes of conscious awareness are obviously 
all we directly experience. Nor, on the other hand, 



Introduction n 

can the assumption and hypothetical manipulation of 
a multiplicity of suprasensible entities, such as the 
atoms of Democritus and of the modern physicists, or 
the monads of Bruno, Leibnitz, and others, be made 
in any way to account for the phenomena arising and 
dwindling within our all-revealing conscious content. 
Consciousness is psychically all-inclusive, physically 
all-exclusive. It is in every conscious being truly 
monadic and solipsistic. It has no "windows " that 
can admit the intrusion of outside existents, nor 
can its unitary manifestation result from any aggrega- 
tion and agitation of assumed inert particles of matter, 
or from the conjoint activity of any kind of grouped 
elements. 

Xo doubt, the phenomenal appearances which make 
up our conscious content must issue from some abid- 
ing matrix. They cannot arise out of nothingness. 
And their conceptual ordering, with its involuted 
logical comprising of what on former occasions had 
been successively and fractionally apprehended, must 
rest somewhere and somehow potentially established 
in latency. And it is manifestly this latently and 
potentially ordered, consolidated, and unified epitome 
of experienced facts which, as occasion arises, becomes 
actual so as to form our conscious content. It con- 
stitutes thus an extra-consciously established matrix 
or groundwork for analytical judgments, and receives, 
sifts, and subsumes random sensorial material into 
preformed classes and orders. 

Xo candid thinker can, however, on the strength of 
such conceptual experience maintain that the hidden 
seat of the conceptual ordering, the place where it 
abides in latency when not casually called into con- 
scious play ; that this secret abode of conceptual forms, 



12 Philosophical Survey 

and their implied experiential content, has yet been 
ascertained with any degree of certainty. We possess 
somehow a preestablished organization endowed with 
various modes of being affected, and we somehow have 
power to discern differences and agreements between 
these affections, their blending, and their manifold 
relations. This enables us to subsume their appre- 
hended similarities under concepts or universals, or 
rather to recognize the special preorganized classes 
or molds into which they naturally fall. These 
organized molds with the particulars they implicitly 
comprise are, w'hen functionally actuated, revealed, and 
recognized within the conscious content as a more or 
less complete system of remembered experience which, 
besides its practical value, lends itself to analytical 
judgments and dialectic evolutions in elucidation of 
the experientially accrued knowledge. 

But what warrant is there in all this to give to the 
hidden matrix of the latently systematized experience 
the name of "Reason" or "Intelligence" or "Spirit," 
as transcendental Idealists are wont to do; meaning" 
thereby an all-efficient potency that creatively mani- 
fests or implicitly contains the entire content of 
eternal Reality, which totality of Being each of us only 
fragmentarily and inadequately apprehends or recog- 
nizes? Surely such hypostatic assumption is alto- 
gether arbitrary and fantastic, and does not even 
hypothetically account for the given facts. 

On the other hand, just as little can that, which is 
perceived as the organic body with its complex morpho- 
logical constitution, be rightly held to be the veritable 
matrix that potentially harbors the conscious content 
with its systematized experience. There can obtain no 
causal relation or efficient connection of any kind. 



Introduction 13 

between consciousness, actual or potential, and that 
which is perceived as brain-structure and its functional 
modes of motion. We have, then, to confess that the 
real seat and matrix of our potentially memorized and 
systematized experience; the seat, in fact, of our 
entire conscious life remains as yet philosophically and 
scientifically unintelligible and enigmatic, although 
what is perceptually revealed as brain-structure has 
been scientifically proved somehow potentially and 
functionally to underly memorized and actual experi- 
ence. 

The recognition of organic evolution has lately com- 
menced to throw light on fundamental problems which 
philosophical speculation has left in the dark. But 
unaided by a correct epistemology this new light has 
no power to penetrate beyond phenomenal appear- 
ances, beyond that which appears as conscious con- 
tent. And, despite endless efforts, no attempt to 
formulate a theory of knowledge has yet succeeded in 
legitimately breaking through the charmed circle of 
individual consciousness. Imprisoned in this solip-* 
sistic realm of transient appearances, philosophy has 
vainly labored to attribute steadfast realistic effi- 
ciency either to sense or to intellect, either to percep- 
tual or conceptual modes of awareness. Nor is it more 
successful in seeking to enthrone as all-efficient potency 
the volitional activity we casually and transiently expe- 
rience as consciously revealed. Xo intuitional Ontol- 
ogy, howsoever consummate and sublime, no science, 
howsoever exact and penetrating, can legitimately 
supersede or supplant the grounding of our interpre- 
tation of nature upon a valid epistemology. The lack 
of it lies at the root of most philosophical contention. 

By critically examining some of the most essential 



14 Philosophical Survey 

attempts at a speculative interpretation of natural 
occurrences, it will appear how impossible it is to 
answer the principal philosophical questions without 
a positive recognition of the real epistemological im- 
port, and the actual realistic bearings, of the conscious 
revelation, which is the only medium of all our expe- 
rience and knowledge. 



II. SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS 
AWAITING SOLUTION 

(i) SUBSTANTIALITY 

Of all philosophical problems that of substantiality 
is paramount. It may rightly be held that philosophy 
has centered in the attempt to disclose the nature of 
the entity that substantially abides amid a world of 
changing appearances, of which it is the emanating 
or manifesting source. With the first systematic 
efforts to discover the permanent entity which seem- 
ingly emits or transforms itself into the shifting and 
changing things that make up the perceptible world, 
or which underlies and actuates the same; with these 
primitive efforts at philosophizing the ever vexed prob- 
lem of Being and Becoming sprang into prominence, 
henceforth to become a prolific propagator of all man- 
ner of hypothetical systems. 

To early thinkers it lay near to attribute life to 
everything that moves and changes, or seems to be 
the bearer of motion and change. The universe ap- 
peared to them to be throughout an animated Being. 
But what kind of Being? This question was ever for 
human thought the supreme puzzle, and has remained 
so up to the present day. 

The ancient sages ascribed substantiality or real 
Being to that which fills space. But that which fills 
space is constantly changing. It soon became obvious 
that what has to be considered permanent cannot pos- 
sibly have its abiding essence in that which is changing 

*5 



1 6 Philosophical Survey 

and transitory, not in the multiplicity of appearing 
and disappearing formations. Abstracting, then, from 
the changeful manifold of sense the Eleatics conceived 
permanent Being to be ever one and the same abiding 
homogeneous substance, immutable and unchangeable. 
The changeful things of the sense-apparent world they 
declared with consistent boldness to be illusive phan- 
toms belonging to a realm of unreal existence, which 
sense-depreciating view is still shared by our tran- 
scendental Idealists. In order to clear real Being, as 
eternally identical, of all diversity and transitoriness, 
the perceptible becoming of things is simply pronounced 
to be a delusion of sense. For no biding-place for sub- 
stantial permanency of Being can be found amid 
nothing but changeful sense -phenomena. Real Being 
was believed by the Eleatics to consist of outspread 
cosmic matter, held to be throughout endowed with 
psychical animation. This view also, taking the cos- 
mic ether as all-efficient substance, has been adopted 
by prominent modern thinkers. 

Human thought feels strongly urged to unify the 
manifold of experience under a general point of view. 
Under this stress it finds itself constrained to conceive 
as permanent source of all existence some kind of 
eternal, unchangeable Being of Substance. While 
surveying nature from this unifying point of view, the 
visible, tangible, space-filling cosmic matter was readily 
taken by ancients and moderns to constitute the per- 
during substance, undergoing protean changes without 
losing its own identity. But it was eventually recog- 
nized, more or less clearly by some ancient thinkers, 
and quite positively by some modern philosophers, 
that the properties, seemingly belonging to what is 
called "matter," are in verity only sensorial affections 



Substantiality 17 

of the perceiving subject, illusively projected as prop- 
erties or qualities of an external material world. 
Psychically despoiled of all its sensible qualities, there 
remained nothing left to constitute real matter. It 
became wholly dissolved into insubstantial phenomena. 

But before philoso.phical contemplation arrived at 
this outright denial of the existence of matter, the 
original immutable, homogeneous substance of the 
Eleatics was hypothetically broken up into a multi- 
plicity of sundry kinds of discrete particles. This in 
order to account for the undeniable motions and 
changes occurring in nature. Change was thus ex- 
plained as a moving or shifting of these particles. At 
first, not only modes of motion of like elements, but 
also diverse qualitative mixtures of heterogeneous 
elements, were made to account for the different ap- 
pearances under which bodily formations present 
themselves. Later, however, motion alone, imparted 
to equal material elements, was deemed, by dint of 
unequal distribution, sufficient to produce all inequal- 
ities of shape and all qualitative differences in nature. 
The logic of the atomic theory forced modern physi- 
cists to conceive the ultimate particles of matter as 
equal, inert, indestructible, and qualitatively indif- 
ferent atomic beings, to whose externally imparted 
modes of motion and peculiar spatial arrangement, 
all differences in nature are then due. 

There remained, however, in the background, 
unaccounted for, the primordial moving power that 
originally set going this mechanically necessitated 
scheme of material particles in motion, in which all 
that has subsequently happened in the world must 
then have been rigorously preconcerted. In the 
light of rational criticism the material substantiality of 



1 8 Philosophical Survey 

the assumed ultimate particles was eventually found 
to be untenable. For changeless units, whose indi- 
visibility and intrinsic simplicity logically exclude 
their extension, are — if still conceived as space-con- 
trolling — reduced to mere centers of force-irradiation, 
such as conceived by Boscowich, Faraday, and others. 
The material theory failed, furthermore, to render 
intelligible how mere matter and motion, themselves 
devoid of qualitative distinctions, can nevertheless 
give rise to such. And it remained still less intelli- 
gible how material particles, however moved and 
aggregated, can in any manner evolve or emanate 
modes of consciousness. Quality and consciousness 
refuse to result from mere quantitative differences of 
whatever constitutes real existence. 

Recently the actuating principle in nature has been 
declared to be ' ' energy ' ' instead of ' ' motion. ' ' Energy 
was at first, and is still generally conceived as the real 
change-producing agent, which — indestructible as mat- 
ter itself — assumes all manner of qualitative guises 
by slipping from one body into another. It is said to 
be thereby equivalently transformed into different 
qualitative modes of appearance. Prominent thinkers 
have even asserted that our modes of consciousness 
are transmuted modes of this all-efficient entity. 
Energy is, however, at bottom only inferred motive 
power conceived as an effect-producing efficiency, 
hypothetically endowed with all manner of qualitative 
potentiality. The specific energy of friction, for 
instance, whilst at work under certain conditions 
among material particles, is held to be converted into 
the specific or qualitatively different effect called 
"heat," or into that called "electricity." But heat 
and electricity are physically declared to be essentially 



Substantiality *9 

definite modes of motion. As motion is, however, 
carrying with it no qualitative distinctions, it is evi- 
dent that here again, despite appearances to the con- 
trary, the true nature of quality has evaded scientific 
explanation. The qualitative potencies attributed to 
energy cannot be the outcome of a world made up 
of material particles actuated by motion. Physical 
science succeeds only in establishing the quantitative, 
mechanical equivalence of interdependent changes in 
perceptible occurrences. It throws no light on the quali- 
tative aspect of changes. 

The part attributed to motion or energy in physical 
science, as indestructible active principles, stamps 
them as substantial entities, such as J. R. Mayer con- 
ceived his energy-force to be. But a motion or energy, 
as such, detached from that which moves or changes 
is really an unthinkable fiction, something that cannot 
be conceived as a self-subsisting substantial entity. 
Substantiality, then, can neither rightly be attributed 
to matter nor to motion nor to energy. 

Along with the attempt at an out and out physical 
explanation of nature, psychical principles of inter- 
pretation gained more and more sway. The all-re- 
vealing part played by consciousness could not long 
be altogether overlooked. Perception was too obvi- 
ously a psychical, subjective function to be wholly con- 
founded with physical modes of existence. And 
although perception was still believed by Protagoras, 
and also by Plato, to be itself the result of motion, 
yet its self-sufficient subjectivity, as exclusively our 
conscious experience, was already maintained by some 
Sophists. And with them, as with us in modern 
times, such subjective, sensualistic Idealism led con- 
sistently to pure Phenomenalism, Scepticism, and 



io Philosophical Survey 

Nihilism. For nothing substantially abiding can be 
discovered in the transitory play of sensorial and 
perceptual phenomena. 

Meanwhile, however, the nature of conception, in 
contrast to that of perception, became more discrimi- 
natively defined. And soon the superior value and 
reality of conceptual over perceptual apprehension 
was firmly maintained, and remained henceforth a 
leading topic of philosophical discussion . Concepts 
were declared to be the real enduring entities in the 
world, the abiding archetypes, or comprehensive 
universals, of which all other modes of existence are 
mere perishing copies or particulars. And conceptual 
comprehension, culminating in an all-comprising, per- 
fect system of self-sufficient thought, was consequently 
believed to constitute sole eternal and universal 
Reality, or absolute Being or Substance. 

But the concept, as a universal entity, in order to 
comprise within its specific grasp an increasing number 
of particulars, has — as generally acknowledged — - 
to drop more and more of its distinguishing traits, 
retaining only general similarities as its actual content. 
The highest, all-comprehensive concept at last reached, 
that namely of universal Being, has in order to com- 
prise what is common to all particulars to cast off all 
their distinctions. It becomes thus the "All" which 
is identical with the ' ' Nothing. ' ' As such it was con- 
ceived in the formless, unconscious, inactive "One" of 
Plotinus, in "das stille Nichts" of Boehme, in the 
"Ungrund" of Schelling, in the " Being-Not-being " of 
Hegel. 

It is, in fact, only by surreptitious reinstatement, by 
help of memory of the discarded distinctions, that the 
concept or universal can be made to contain the 



Substantiality 21 

entire wealth of properties or qualities belonging to 
the comprised particulars. Moreover, even granted, 
as some thinkers maintain, that concepts really contain 
implicitly the entire content of their comprehended 
particulars; that there really exists a transcendent 
Absolute that comprises actually or potentially the 
complete system of conceptual thought or ideas ; even 
granting all this, no visible or tangible things, no 
extended exis tents, no genuine emotions, no efficient 
volitions, can be at all extracted or evolved there- 
from. Neither Plotinus nor Spinoza, neither Scotus 
Erigina nor Schelling, neither Leibnitz nor Hegel, 
have in their various attempts in the remotest degree 
succeeded in showing how the world of direct, actual 
experience can in any way be evolved from an ideally 
constituted Absolute, or, indeed, from any kind of 
ideally conceived substance. Nothing of a purely 
ideal nature, nothing merely thought-woven can be 
the permanent, substantial matrix of our all-revealing 
conscious content, and much less can it constitute the 
real universe which that conscious content reveals. 

Nor can it be rendered rationally and ethically 
intelligible how an absolute Being can ever come to 
dissipate its eternal, all-sufficient perfection, in order 
to give rise to a succession of deficient perishing things 
and events. 

On the other hand, to discard altogether the assump- 
tion of some kind of substantial and permanent Being 
as the source of the perpetual flux of things, nay to 
deny the existence of anything substantial underlying 
the transient appearances of phenomenal existence, 
as was objectively the teaching of Heraclitus, and sub- 
jectively that of Fichte; this amounts, in truth, to 
assuming a creation of all things out of nothing. A 



12 Philosophical Survey 

pure self-subsisting activity, conceived as the generat- 
ing agent of the becoming things or phenomena, call 
it force, motion, energy, actus purus, reason, entelechy, 
productive imagination, Ego, or what not; such pure 
creative activity is itself a nonentity evolving every- 
thing out of an unsubstantial void. 

Production or creation out of nothing is unthinkable, 
and its assumption wholly irrational. Here, as in all 
excogitated world-constructions, it is our own conscious 
content with all its wealth of memorized experience 
that is really serving as inexhaustible, ready-made 
building material. But our all-revealing conscious 
content, an out and out appearance in time, partici- 
pates necessarily in its perpetual flux. And some kind 
of activity must evidently give rise to this process of 
continual becoming. But activity rationally presup- 
poses a permanent, substantial agent as the real bearer 
and actuator of the phenomenal play. Leibnitz, for 
this reason, introduced the notion of " psychical force," 
as the real actuating agent, and declared it to be the 
only veritable substance in existence, opposing it to 
the two substances of the Cartesians, and to the abso- 
lute substance of Spinoza. But our entire psychical 
experience, accruing to us as an out and out temporal 
phenomenon, is consequently forceless and evanes- 
cent, and none of its manifestations can therefore be 
rightly installed as substantial force or forceful sub- 
stance. Fichte, unlike Leibnitz, was an outspoken 
Non-sub stan tialist, eager to derive all becoming as 
creation or actus purus of an absolutely free and un- 
grounded activity, having nothing substantial under- 
lying it. In doing so he hypostasizcd a beingless 
abstraction as world creator. 

The proximate, all-important question here to be 



Substantiality 23 

decided is: Whence arises our all-revealing conscious 
content? Neither Leibnitz nor Fichte have in the 
least succeeded in answering it. Spinoza's notion of 
substance is conceived in analogy to geometrical con- 
ceptions. Geometrical space may be speculatively 
regarded as potentially comprising all possible forms 
that can at all appear within it. Such specialized forms, 
when they actually take shape are then in truth limit- 
ing determinations, introducing a specializing negation 
into the original undifferentiated all-comprehensive- 
ness of space. And as regards the mutual relations 
of the specialized forms, they limit and thereby in- 
fluence and implicate one another's being. An analog- 
ical view guides Spinoza's conception of absolute 
substance and its attributes and modes. Spinoza's 
substance may be likened to pure white light, which 
potentially comprises all colors in homogeneous unity, 
In the same manner does he conceive the absolute 
substance to comprise within its all-comprehensive 
perfection every possible attribute, and these in their 
turn every possible accident or mode compatible with 
their specialized nature. 

All this granted, though it is entirely imaginary, 
whence, it must be asked, the activity, the power that 
shapes the definite forms, that breaks the single white 
radiance into variegated multiplicity; that segregates 
from homogeneous all-comprehension the special attri- 
butes of "thought" and "extension," which are held 
to constitute our own world? In fine, whence the 
perpetual flux of perishing things that taints the eter- 
nal perfection of All-Being ? To this essential question 
no answer can be found in Spinoza's philosophy. And, 
indeed, no rational answer to it can be extracted from 
any absolutistic Ontology. An absolute, all-compris- 



24 Philosophical Survey 

ing, divine substance refuses rationally to tear its 
perfection to tatters. If it does so "irrationally," as 
Schelling maintains, it then becomes guilty of all the 
pitiful insufficiency that, then, follows from so degrad- 
ing an action. Schopenhauer's Pessimism is the con- 
sistent outcome of such a conception. 

Spinoza's substance is conceived as an eternally 
undifferentiated, changeless totality of existence. No 
efficient or final causation is here allowed to give rise 
to the manifold of experience, no force or agency to 
actuate changes in its diverse appearances. For there 
can be no becoming where all is timeless and coexisting. 
Spinoza's fundamental error lies in his confounding 
and identifying "reason" with "cause." "Ratio sen 
Causa" is the magic formula he employs to summon 
definite activities and forms from out his eternally 
formless and quiescent substance. What is called a 
"reason" is rightly conceived as containing implicitly 
"consequents" already comprehended under it; but 
it cannot itself moreover cause these consequents. A 
cause is followed by a new-production of effects, while 
a reason contains its consequents as potentially pres- 
ent. Logical evolution and geometrical coexistence 
are principles utterly incommensurable with natural 
becoming. They are impotent to bring into sensible 
existence anything that is directly and actually experi- 
enced. And it is exclusively with the principle of 
reason and consequent, and with geometrical rela- 
tions, that Spinoza attempts to account for what actu- 
ally occurs in nature. By endowing his substance with 
the attribute of extension, as well as with that of 
thought, he complicates still more the insurmountable 
difficulty of speculatively deriving multiplicity from 
unity, and change from changelessness. This is more 



Substantiality 25 

plausibly effected in systems where thought alone is 
attributed to universal Being. The implicit content of 
what is called "thought" or "idea" may seemingly be 
made to evolve with logical necessity. The content of 
extension, being subject to geometrical necessity, ad- 
mits of no such evolution. In extension everything is 
simultaneous. And Spinoza aims to explain the entire 
content of nature, conceived as absolute substance, 
mainly in accordance with geometrical principles. 

The ancient problem of speculatively deriving the 
"Many" from the "One," so admirably discussed in 
Plato's Parmenides, offers difficulties nowise overcome 
in Spinoza's system. He can give no valid reason why 
the one absolute substance, the ens realissimum and 
perfectissimum, should at all come to differentiate or 
determine itself; and still less why, containing infinite 
possibilities, it should determine itself in definite eter- 
nal ways, such as thought and extension are held to 
be. Spinoza, when forced to face this fundamental 
question, has recourse — as seen in his correspondence 
— to the inconsistent device of making the definite 
attributes result from the peculiar limitations of the 
apprehending intellect, which views the absolute sub- 
stance under special determinate aspects. But "intel- 
lect" being in Spinoza's system a manifestation of the 
attribute "thought" cannot possibly be its determin- 
ing cause. And as to the attribute "extension," even 
allowing it, with all its modes, to have been somehow 
differentiated within the absolute substance, its time- 
less, changeless, forceless geometrical forms, could no- 
wise resemble the visible and tangible moving, changing 
things we are cognizant of. These real things, unlike 
mere geometrical figures, are replete with intrinsic- 
properties; nay, they are altogether constituted by the 



16 Philosophical Survey 

potencies which give rise to these properties. Spinoza's 
substance fails in sundry essential ways to account for 
actual experience, and to constitute the veritable ma- 
trix of natural occurrences. 

Kant's transcendental way of reaching the concept 
of substance is highly interesting for our purpose. 
He recognizes the perpetual flux of all appearances 
within time, or the " inner sense." According to 
his view, the ever-flowing successive moments of time 
are, however, apprehended as being moments of one 
single, all-comprising, all-connecting time. But time 
itself cannot be perceived. It is apprehended by 
means of its sensible content. This content is con- 
tinually changing, and as nothing can arise from 
nothing, nor revert into nothing, something perma- 
nent must underlie the fleeting and changing mani- 
festations. They must; consequently, be modes of 
appearance of a perduring substance. This inferred 
substance Kant is led to identify with indestructible 
matter, which he conceives to be the permanent sub- 
stratum of all extended appearances. These material 
appearances are, however, with Kant nothing outside 
perception, nowise, therefore, things-in-themselves. 
They have their being in our own a priori form of 
extended perception, called space. 

But everything appearing within space and time 
would remain chaotic, unapprehended, and unapper- 
ceived, unless the random material of sense were 
taken up as it flows along, bit by bit, and thereupon 
synthetically grasped and unified, to be finally out 
and out transformed into an intellectualized system of 
objective nature. This rational collective fashioning 
of objective universal nature out of incoherent, sub- 
jective sense-material is brought about, according to 



Substantiality 27 

Kant, by the combining and unifying functions of pure 
reason, which reason itself has its root in the "intelli- 
gible Ego," as manifest in the "synthetical unity of 
apperception." The true nature of this "intelli- 
gible Ego," which with Kant constitutes our real 
transphenomenal or noumenal Being, is nowise revealed 
in any of the appearances in time and space. It 
subsists beyond time and space as the veritable bearer 
and actuator of both our sense perception and our 
intellectual apperception. Matter, the substance of 
sensible appearances, Kant designates as "substantia 
phenomenon," the timeless, spaceless, intelligible Ego 
as ' ' substantia noumenon . ' ' 

The all-important epistemological fallacy in Kant's 
elaborate and profound derivation of "substance" is 
to be found in the attribution of objectifying, univer- 
salizing power to the synthetic functions of pure 
reason. No valid justification can be here advanced 
why the substance inferred to be the permanent sub- 
stratum of our individual, and therefore subjective 
spatial perceptions, should acquire objective universal 
reality by being brought under the sway of the sub- 
stantializing function of pure reason. Why should 
the substance individually inferred as underlying my 
subjective spatial perceptions become objectified and 
universalized into the identical matter or substance 
recognized by each of the sundry individual conscious- 
nesses ? 

The essential problem of epistemology is no other 
than to show how individual consciousness can be 
legitimately transcended; how it happens to yield 
universally valid knowledge, knowledge shared by the 
rational consciousness of all other human beings. 
This paramount epistemological task has never yet 



28 Philosophical Survey 

been rightly accomplished. No thinker has yet suc- 
ceeded in finding a legitimate way out of the phe- 
nomenal solipsism of individual consciousness into the 
realm of universal existence. The common rational 
experience of all human beings must certainly have 
a common source of information. Where, then, is 
this common source to be found? 

It is an entirely arbitrary procedure to endow the 
individual being with universally valid reason, with 
reason capable of producing universally valid nature. 
This wholly ungrounded assumption ignores completely 
the inevasible epistemological problem. It virtually 
deifies the individual by attributing to him all but 
omnipotent creative power. For as the universally 
valid conception of real substance, indeed the con- 
struction of nature in general, is with Kant, an outcome 
of each individual's sense-perception intellectualized, 
and as sense and intellect are held to be grounded in 
their intelligible Ego, the consciousness of each Ego 
must then, in order to be universally valid, be identical 
with the consciousnesses of all other Egos, must be 
what Kant actually names it: ''consciousness in gen- 
eral," ' ' Bewusztsein uberhaupt. " And this could be 
the case only if all intelligible Egos formed equally 
part of a universal Ego, which would then be the 
veritable creator of the universally valid content of 
"consciousness in general." The consistent outcome 
of the assumption of objectifying reason is, then, by 
no means the intended "transcendental Idealism," 
but pure absolute Idealism. This is really Kant's 
own view when he contemplates the world from the 
intelligible standpoint. He conceives, then, the intelli- 
gible Ego as really endowed with the power of free 
volitional causation; the power namely of initiating 



Substantiality 29 

all the actions of the sense-apparent individual. And 
he derives this power from a universal Will or Ego, 
the veritable creator and actuator of all natural appear- 
ances. This absolute Idealism, based on the assump- 
tion of the free productive volition of the universal Ego, 
was elaborately expounded by Fichte. And Schopen- 
hauer made all-creating Will the foundation of his 
system. 

Strange to say, the entire aim of Kant's critique of 
pure reason is, nevertheless, to controvert absolute 
Idealism. Not only in his much-discussed " Refutation 
of Idealism," but in numerous other passages, he em- 
phatically denies the creative power of pure reason, and 
declares that no knowledge can be attained, unless 
sense-material be "given," or at least specifically 
aroused by outside influences emanating from the realm 
of things-in-themselves. And he rightly showed that 
the consciousness and apprehension of the permanency 
of our own being is dependent on the persistency of 
the influx of the foreign influence. He reasoned that, 
if sensorial material were not persistently given or 
aroused, our synthetizing reason, having no material 
to work upon, could not possibly construct anything 
permanent; nay, that our veritable being, our intelli- 
gible Ego, could, then, never become revealed as a 
permanent, substantial entity. 

But even with all outspoken dislike of pure Idealism, 
and his seemingly valid refutation of it, and against the 
sum and substance of his critique, " noumenorum non 
datur sciential Kant fails to escape the meshes of the 
idealistic net, in which his immediate followers com- 
placently revelled. For that which he believed to 
affect our sensibilities from outside he held to emanate 
from the noumenal sphere, and this, with him, is the 



3° Philosophical Survey 

same transphenomenal realm to which our intelligible 
Ego is declared to belong. But in the intelligible, nou- 
menal sphere the Ego of all Egos is in Kant's system 
the veritable creator and actuator of all natural occur- 
rences, indeed of all existence whatever. Consequently 
it must be this universal, noumenal Ego of the intelli- 
gible world that is here determining or affecting itself in 
definite ways. Here, however, not centrally, by force 
of free volitional causation, but sensorially and percep- 
tually in the sphere of phenomenal and mechanical 
necessity. Now, as free causation, centrally initiated 
from out the noumenal sphere, strictly coincides in its 
phenomenal outcomes with necessitated causation, 
peripherically impressed from out the same noumenal 
sphere, absolute Idealism is again, despite protests to 
the contrary, consistently reached. 1 

There can be no doubt that our all-revealing, yet 

1 Kant's attitude towards Idealism has always been a highly 
perplexing question, much discussed among German philosophers, 
and lately also among English-speaking thinkers. The present 
writer, in an early work published 187 1, "Die Kant'sche Erkennt- 
nisslehre widerlegt von Standpunkt der Empirie," asserted that 
Kant's philosophy is not really, as he himself professes, a "critical " 
or "transcendental" philosophy, but a metaphysical Ontology: 
"dass die Kant'sche Philosophic ihrem Grundprincip nach gar 
keine Transcendental-Philosophie ist, sondern eine metaphysische 
Ontologie," p. 172. And this because all that in the critique is 
seemingly taking place in the sphere of our empirical consciousness 
is in reality the work of the "transcendent" activity of the "intelli- 
gible Ego." 

This view has found its complete justification since "the going 
back to Kant" has led to a searching examination of his writings 
by a host of eager investigators. It has been directly corroborated , 
besides, since the publication of Kant's posthumous work, "Ueber- 
gang von den metaphysichen Aufangsgriinde der Naturwissen- 
schaft zur Physic." His matured world conception, and therewith 
his final attitude towards Idealism, may be briefly formulated in 
the following terms : Within the outer spatial consciousness of our 



Substantiality 3 J 

ever-flowing conscious content presupposes a perma- 
nent substance, matrix, or Ego underlying and actuat- 
ing it. But this can certainly not be found in what is 
called "matter" nor in what is called "intellect"; not 
in Kant's material substance of the phenomenal order, 
nor in anything belonging to his fancied realm of 
noumenal subsistence. 

But even if the real substance underlying and actu- 
ating our all-revealing conscious content were truly 
discovered, there would still remain the all-important 
question, why our exclusively individual endowments 
of perception and conception are competent to yield 
universally valid knowledge, knowledge shared by all 
rational beings, and validly applicable to natural 
occurrences. No kind of pure Idealism has solved, 
or can ever solve, this fundamental epistemological 
problem. 

empirical Ego we find the appearance of our own body, and also, 
occupying all other space, the appearance of the other bodies that 
constitute the universe outside our own body. These foreign 
bodily appearances affect the senses of our bodily appearance , giving 
rise thereby to the inner consciousness of our empirical Ego. All 
these occurrences, while taking place in the sphere of our empirical 
consciousness, are, however, in reality modes of the apperception 
of our intelligible Ego, which itself is forming part of the all-com- 
prising intelligible world. Consequently, all phenomenal occurrence 
revealed as nature to our empirical consciousness is really created 
and actuated in the intelligible world. 

At an earlier period, Kant held the extra-conscious things-in- 
themselves, and not the intra-conscious bodily appearances, to be 
affecting the senses. And he believed that by recognizing, in 
opposition to Leibnitz, a "mundus phenomenon," a world of 
sensible appearances, set against the "mundus noumenon or 
intelligibilis, " he had overcome the latter's out and out intellectual 
Idealism, and therewith all pure Idealism. But it is clear that, by 
attributing all real efficiency to the noumenal or intelligible sphere 
he landed himself in the enticing realm of pure intellectual and 
volitional Idealism. 



32 Philosophical Survey 

(2) Identity 

Closely connected with the problem of substanti- 
ality is that other great unsolved riddle of identity in 
nature. Without the practical reliability and theo- 
retical conviction of the lasting subsistence of things 
and thoughts amid the perpetual flux of time, and 
during their absence from actual awareness, the con- 
duct of life and that of rational thinking would 
be impossible. But where and how do things and 
thoughts really identically abide when not consciously 
apprehended? And when present in consciousness, 
how can they remain identical when each moment of 
their presence lapses with time in which they flow into 
the irrecoverable past to be no more? Heraclitus, 
deeply impressed with the mutability of everything 
in this world, seized upon the recurring order of 
sequence amid the incessant change as the principle 
of stability and identity, conceiving it as divinely 
ordered "Fate," which he called " Reason." 

The principle which in experience and knowledge is 
held to impart consistent and steadfast meaning to 
the changeful and fleeting phenomena of actual aware- 
ness, has very generally been designated as "Reason." 
Such reason must then be a permanent, transphenom- 
enal agent actually engaged in the cognitive constitu- 
tion of the universe. The Heraclitean view involved, 
however, a preestablished harmony between subjective 
experience and objective nature, similar to that forced 
upon Leibnitz, in order to make the wholly occluded 
conscious experience of each of his nomads tally with 
what is simultaneously occurring outside in the world 
at large. For as thought with all its divinely fated 
order is itself involved in the perpetual flux of time, its 



Identity 33 

sequence of reason -fated apprehension must have been, 
as such, not only preordained, but also by means of 
preestablished harmony accurately timed to the se- 
quence of the apprehended outside occurrences. This 
really means, what the Cartesians maintained, that 
such actual and constant coincidence of thought and 
being is the preestablished result of a divine fiat. It 
need hardly be mentioned that this frequent device 
of calling in a Deus ex machind in this perennial di- 
lemma of thought and being affords no philosophical 
explanation. 

As to the theory of preestablished harmony advanced 
by Leibnitz, it is really a useless incumbrance in his 
Monadology. His monads know nothing whatever of 
outside existence and order. Each monad recognizes 
without assistance from outside, in its own intrinsic 
series of evolving perceptions and apperceptions more 
or less distinctly and perfectly, the identical universal 
truth or reality implicitly imparted to it by the supreme 
" Monad' ' or "Deity." A monad is what Leibnitz 
himself calls it, a "spiritual automaton," apperceiving 
the perceptions that arise within itself with fatalistic 
necessity. The omniscient Deity alone, and evidently 
only by transcending his own monadic seclusion, could 
possibly know what was going on in other monads, and 
what kind of universe, if any, they were conjointly 
constituting. The truth is, moreover, that the intrinsic 
experience arising separately in each autonomous 
monad, if it could in some mysterious way be collec- 
tively combined; that such combination would not 
even then result in the formation of a coherent uni- 
verse. And this not only because it is potentially 
exactly the same, and yet actually an entirely diverse 
world each monad is apperceiving or perceiving, but 



34 Philosophical Survey 

also because the content of each monad, consisting 
of that of all other monads, no monad could have a 
special content of its own, and could therefore not 
supply other monads with any content. A plurality 
of wholly autonomous, wholly exclusive beings, cannot 
possibly compose any kind of universe or cosmos. 

Here identity of any sort, metaphysical, logical, sub- 
jective, and objective, fails to receive philosophical 
or rational explanation. In a being whose whole 
existence consists of transient, successively fated evo- 
lution and apperception of eternal truth; in such a 
mutable, ever-evolving being nothing identical can 
subsist. And even if every succeeding apperception 
were to sum up all precedent perceptions and apper- 
ceptions, or evolve them in a comprehensive and dis- 
tinct totality, the apperceiving monad, consisting of 
such successive apperception, cannot possibly remain 
an identical being while undergoing such constant 
change. 

The Eleatic sages, on the contrary, in their search 
for what identically abides, eliminated from reality 
every mode of change, leaving only what they declared 
to be an ever-identical substance, eternally immutable 
and homogeneous throughout. And though they con- 
ceived it as psychically animated, they could consis- 
tently endow it only with changeless life and thought, 
and this, it need not be said, amounts to a complete 
negation to what essentially constitutes the nature 
of life and thought. In the same way an inactive, 
changeless substance, without qualitative and quanti- 
tative distinctions of content or manifestation, would 
be a complete negation of what essentially constitutes 
the nature of substantiality, which is necessarily in- 
ferred as affording a unitary substrate and source for 



Identity 35 

manifold accidents or modes. The Eleatics simply 
stagnated the entire universe, not — as they believed 
— into an absolute substance, but into an absolute 
Nothing. Still, despite this landing into pure Nihilism, 
the subtle reasoning with which they defended their 
paradoxical position stimulated philosophical thought 
to sundry ever-memorable exertions. The relation of 
the all-comprising, steadfast world comprehended by 
what is called " reason, " to that of the sense-apparent 
changeful manifold, became henceforth a leading 
problem of philosophical speculation. 

As to Spinoza's absolute Substance, in which all 
reality, all possible infinite attributes, are conceived as 
an eternally simultaneous and undifferentiated totality 
of Being, and which therefore must be itself ever 
immutable and identical ; it is obvious that this seem- 
ingly all-involving ens realissimum and perfectissimum 
is in verity the Eleatic "Nothing" over again, a 
nonentity having no qualitative nor quantitative dis- 
tinctions. And how, it may again be asked, can 
an identical, homogeneous being possibly differentiate 
within itself, and actuate the two special attributes, 
thought and extension, and their divers accidents and 
modes, so as to constitute our restlessly teeming and 
diversified world? 

The overreaching notion of an identical, immutable 
"All" coincides with the ineffable Nothing of the 
Mystics and with the Buddhistic Nirvana. The like 
is always reached when speculation eliminates actual 
diversity and change from what it deems to be supreme 
reality. But to attribute diversity and change to an 
ens perfectissimum is equivalent to wholly dissipating 
its ideal perfection. Hence the justification of pessi- 
mistic and ascetic creeds. 



36 Philosophical Survey 

Identity can manifest itself only as a foil of difference. 
It cannot be rightly ascribed to the mere conceptual 
apprehension of similarities and differences attaching 
to the diverse manifold ; but has to be ascribed to the 
real entity that amid change identically abides. Yet 
how this can be possible, how something can identi- 
cally abide despite undergoing changes, is a problem 
that has never yet been solved. The enduring identity 
of concepts and their content, which renders thinking 
possible, is evidently established in extra-conscious 
latency where our potential memory has its seat. 
And who has yet disclosed the nature and constitu- 
tion of that permanent matrix, whence past experience 
issues identically and repeatedly into present aware- 
ness, actual experience being thereby recognized as 
identical with past experience ? 

After all manner of trials it still remains a funda- 
mental problem to explain how it becomes possible 
that the identity of anything can be maintained intact 
when everything we experience takes place in the 
perpetual flux of time, and amid its ever-changing and 
lapsing content. Whatever has been asserted to the 
contrary, it is logically inconceivable how something 
can undergo changes and yet remain identical. The 
puzzle is only heightened when the changing something 
is declared to be in essence a simple, unextended, 
uncompounded entity, such as the soul, or the think- 
ing principle, is generally conceived to be. How can 
it be made intelligible that the inferred seat of our 
conscious affections and reactions may, despite its 
alleged simplicity, suffer constant intrinsic changes 
without losing its identity? To potentially endow a 
postulated entity with all manner of affective and 
reactive modes, and in the face of it to declare it to be 



Identity 37 

a simple, unextended, uncompounded substance, in- 
volves all too plainly an irreconcilable contradiction. 
And thereupon, furthermore, to assert that affections 
and reactions, which are necessarily intrinsic changes, 
leave, nevertheless, the changing subject identical or 
unchanged, is surely heaping contradiction upon con- 
tradiction. The assumption that something in exis- 
tence, and were it even some compound, and not 
merely a simple uncompounded entity, can spend itself 
in affections and reactions of whatever kind, and yet 
remain identically intact; this assumption involves a 
glaring contradiction. Nevertheless, it underlies all 
our practical conduct and all our thinking operations. 

Kant fully recognizes that the apprehended "iden- 
tity" of phenomena, though they consciously appear 
at different moments of time, that such identity of 
past and present appearances is necessarily dependent 
on the abiding identity of a matrix, conceived by him 
as "pure consciousness in general," a matrix which 
permanently and potentially harbors the conscious 
manifestations, but which is itself belonging to the 
transphenomenal apperceiving subject. This identical 
unity of the apperceiving Ego, maintained amid all 
phenomenal manifoldness and change, Kant holds to 
be the supreme condition of objective existence and 
cognition, and he identifies it with the unity of all 
phenomenal appearances. 

Here Kant hits upon the main crux of philosophical 
interpretation; namely, how the existence of a trans- 
phenomenal subject and its real nature may from 
actual experience be rightly inferred, as that which 
potentially and permanently contains systematized all 
phenomena that casually and partially issue into 
present awareness; and how amid all this change and 



38 Philosophical Survey 

expenditure it succeeds, nevertheless, to retain its own 
identity. Before this central problem is satisfactorily 
solved metaphysical systems of whatever kind can 
have only the value of fanciful constructions. 

(3) CAUSATION OR ACTUATING POWER 

Substantiality considered not only statically but 
also dynamically involves agency, force, or actuating 
power. The inferred existence of what is called 
"substance" is grounded on the rational need of pre- 
supposing a permanent substratum underlying the 
fleeting and changing phenomena of nature. And 
such a substance, in order to account not only for the 
coherence and consistency of natural phenomena, but 
also for their mutations, has to be conceived as actu- 
ating agent. 

For this reason Leibnitz, who rightly held that no 
actuating principle is immanent in the geometrically 
extended substance of the Cartesians, nor in what is 
generally called inert matter, was led to formulate his 
all-efficient conception of "acting force," which he 
identified with substantiality. A substance with him 
is out and out "force." And as force is something 
unextended and immaterial, substances must be im- 
material or purely psychical forces. Consequently, 
he declared pure psychical force or activity to be the 
very essence of his monads or simple substances. And 
such psychical force or activity is then made by Leib- 
nitz to account for all movements and mutations in 
nature. 

But waving other serious objections in the way of 
any kind of self -actuation giving rise to intrinsic muta- 
tions within his monads or simple substances, it is 



Causation 39 

logically unthinkable how anything can any way move 
or change within simple substances, which have, as 
Leibnitz himself asserts, "no parts, no extension, no 
form, no divisibility." Quite irrespective of motion 
and change in space, every natural occurrence, every 
apperception and content of the monad, takes place as 
a flowing process, and such succession and change 
cannot possibly occur in simple substances such as the 
monads of Leibnitz are conceived to be. The percep- 
tions and apperceptions of each monad, which as such 
constitute all there exists of natural occurrences, intro- 
duce within these simple beings "parts," "extension," 
"form," and "divisibility," which are altogether con- 
trary to their simple nature. The problem of agency 
or actuation, which includes that of causation, is far 
more intricate and recondite than Leibnitz ever con- 
ceived it to be. 

Like the assumed conscious content of the imaginary 
monads of Leibnitz, the actual, all-revealing content of 
our own consciousness is an ever-flowing phenomenon 
in time, to which no substantiality, no identity, no 
agency or force can be rightly attributed. Hume, 
therefore, truly maintains that "we never have any 
impression that contains any power or efficacy." And 
as Phenomenalist, he concludes, " that we never have 
any idea of power, efncacy, agency, force, energy, con- 
nection, and productive quality," which sweeping con- 
clusion is in verity the consistent outcome of pure 
Phenomenalism or Nonsubstantialism. 

What prodigious commotion this force and substance- 
deprived, soulless and bodyless interpretation of nature 
created among philosophers and theologians is matter 
of history. Yet it is quite evident that conscious 
phenomena, the only phenomena we are actually aware 



4° Philosophical Survey 

of, are as such utterly forceless and nonsubstantial. 
How, indeed, can anything like force or substantiality 
be attributed to fleeting and evanescent occurrences? 
Even physicists have lately come to discard the notion 
of " force" in their explanation, or what they call their 
description of natural phenomena. No wonder that, 
after renouncing all hypothetical inferences, they can 
find nothing like ''force" entering into perceptual 
appearances or presentations. And these perceptual 
appearances are knowingly or unknowingly the immedi- 
ate objects of physical research. In physical science 
what is called "force" is really only an inference of 
what is perceived as accelerated motion postulated as 
its actuating cause. Mathematical physics aims to be- 
come an out and out phenomenalistic science by reduc- 
ing all natural occurrences to mere modes of motion. 

Psychology, on the other hand, when it consistently 
pursues its introspective course among the immedi- 
ately given content of consciousness, lands likewise 
into pure Phenomenalism; in fact, into an utterly 
meaningless medley of conscious states. To escape 
this irrational outcome, Psychology has usually postu- 
lated some efficient entity as actuating, combining, 
and cognizing agent, such as an intelligible Ego or 
supersensible soul endowed with synthetic, appercep- 
tive, or attentive activity, or with special faculties or 
dispositions. For from the mere congeries of conscious 
phenomena, arising and dwindling in and out of aware- 
ness, no real knowledge can be derived, when they are 
taken to signify nothing beyond themselves. It is 
only when certain realistic bearings or implications of 
the conscious phenomena are positively assumed and 
steadfastly borne in mind that they gain genuine 
significance. Otherwise, Psychology, amid nothing 



Causation 41 

but fleeting and forceless modes of awareness, finds 
itself reduced to a Phenomenalism far more helpless 
and nihilistic than that of Hume. For Hume postu- 
lated a number of extra-conscious and transphenomenal 
factors, in order, plausibly, to establish some order and 
coherence among his chaos of unrelated and evanescent 
elements of world-construction. No purely phenome- 
nalistic Psychology, no significant science of mere 
conscious phenomena, as such, is at all possible. 

It is a mere figure of speech, without real foundation, 
to say that an antecedent component of the conscious 
content is, as such, existentially associated with or 
linked to a subsequent component. By thus assuming 
a real connection or effective bond between modes of 
awareness, agency, or power is attributed to the utterly 
forceless conscious phenomena. And how can some- 
thing antecedent, something that has ceased to exist, 
be connected with and have power to summon into 
actual presence something that has not yet come into 
existence? This simple consideration is fatal to all 
Sensation and Association-Philosophy, for they pre- 
suppose the conscious elements with which they oper- 
ate to possess endurance and efficiency, while they are 
really wholly forceless and evanescent. 

The great question of necessary connection or causa- 
tion has more than ever perplexed philosophers and 
scientists since Hume made the vain attempt to 
explain it experientially, as established by an habitual 
sequence and coexistence experienced as obtaining 
among the appearance of psychical elements or par- 
ticulars. With this failure to discover the real bond 
of orderly connection between conscious phenomena 
as such, the last remnant of coherence and regularity 
among the insubstantial procession of evanescent 



42 Philosophical Survey 

appearances dissolves no less into Nihility than the 
substantiality of mind and matter has tinder Hume's 
own scrutiny. Where, then, is the real bond of connec- 
tion and the systematic order of conscious phenomena 
enduringly established? 

Despite of Hume's out and out nominalistic Ideal- 
ism, involving pure Phenomenalism and Nihilism, a 
momentous step forward was taken in the direction 
toward Naturalism by his keen advocacy of the primacy 
and paramount instructive value of perceptual occur- 
rences and their experiential order, over that of the 
mere reproductive play of logical evolutions. In 
Germany formal logic was at that time held to be the 
supreme canon of speculative philosophy. Under its 
sway our perceptual experience was regarded, not as 
a really original and preeminently reliable source of 
information, but as something quite indiscriminate, 
resulting from obscure and confused thinking. 

From Hume Kant learned, to his surprise, the essen- 
tial lesson, that the original material of knowledge is 
exclusively sense -derived, and that it can nowise be 
logically deduced from preexisting general concepts; 
that the relation between cause and effect is something 
differing altogether from what in logic is called " reason 
and consequent ' ' ; that only synthetical propositions 
yield fruitful knowledge, while analytical propositions 
render merely more explicit what was already implicitly 
and experientially known. The consistent outcome of 
this experiential teaching, the outcome which so 
deeply impressed Kant is, that sense-derived experi- 
ence can nowise be transcended; that, consequently, 
all metaphysical attempts to overreach such experi- 
ence are futile. Kant in all his critical investigations 
held fast to this revolutional teaching. He never lost 



Causation 43 

sight of the fact that the material of knowledge is 
sense-derived. 

But, though Kant acknowledged the truth of the 
Aristotelean and Lockeian dictum: "Nihil est in 
intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu," he eagerly wel- 
comed its Leibnitzian addition : " Nisi ipse intellectus." 
And henceforth his principal effort consisted in investi- 
gating the part which the intellect is playing in experi- 
ence. The "Critique of Pure Reason," as every 
student of philosophy knows, is the result of this 
laborious and profound investigation. 

It was principally the problem of causation that 
gave the impulse to Kant's critical or transcendental 
philosophy. Here, then, in relation to this funda- 
mental question, if ever, was to be effectively tied 
the binding knot between the loosely given sense 
appearances and their systematized apperception. 
How, then, with his many strings in hand, did Kant 
really succeed in joining them together? He had on 
the sensory side first the things-in-themselves in 
mysterious relation to the outer or spatial sense, 
which they somehow affect so as to cause it to be 
filled with appearances that are the material of knowl- 
edge. Then he has here also the form of the inner 
sense, known as " time, " which cannot be itself appre- 
hended, but to whose perpetual flux all outer and 
inner appearances and affections are necessarily subject. 

Exclusively with this fleeting building material 
in time the steadfast fabric of knowledge had thus to 
be constructed. In order to accomplish this, Kant 
has, on the side of intellect, first " empirical appre- 
hension," whose own apprehending moments are like- 
wise a flowing content of time; and which, therefore, 
can only snatch up instant by instant what is consecu- 



44 Philosophical Survey 

tively given; whereupon "reproductive imagination' ' 
has to reconstruct in simultaneous connection the 
sensorial content of the lapsed moments, rendering 
thus possible the empirically apprehended extension of 
space, and the continuity or duration of time, and 
of their material content. Moreover, Kant held in 
reserve the categories or synthetical functions which 
have to convert the empirical or subjective appre- 
hension of appearances into universally valid knowl- 
edge, whereby consistent, objective nature is fashioned 
out of the medley of sensorial appearances. To fully 
accomplish this objectifying task all work of the 
synthetical functions has to be systematically con- 
solidated in the "synthetic unity of apperception.' ' 
And this in its turn inheres in the "intelligible Ego," 
which belongs to the "noumenal world," where the 
"objective and universal consciousness" has its real 
being. 

It will be conceded that to hold these many distinct 
factors of knowledge firmly in mind, while endeavoring 
to make them all enter into harmonious and efficient 
cooperation in their task of constituting nature, it will 
be conceded that this is indeed a prodigious under- 
taking. Let us then see how Kant succeeds, by means 
of his stupendous explanatory machinery, to establish 
the fundamental principle of causation, involving that 
of force and agency. The incontrovertible fact, directly 
apprehended on the sensory side, is that everything ex- 
perienced and everything experiencing is involved in the 
perpetual flux of what is called ' ' time. ' ' And this tran- 
sitoriness of all actual facts and modes of awareness 
Kant fully recognizes. On the intellectual side, the 
grounding axiom is that ancient one, that nothing can 
arise out of nothing nor revert into nothing. And this 






Causation 45 

axiomatic permanency and indestructibility of that 
which underlies the changing appearances, Kant like- 
wise fully acknowledges. With its assistance he derives, 
by means of his a priori category of substantiality, the 
" substantia phenomenon," which he forthwith iden- 
tifies with the changing but indestructible matter of 
the chemists. Moreover, he rightly asserts that force 
and agency are necessarily attributed to substance, 
and that the changing manifoldness of the fleeting 
appearances can be only varying modes of the perma- 
nent substance, for they cannot emerge out of noth- 
ing, nor revert into it. Consequently, causation, or 
the necessary sequence of appearances, must be the 
outcome of the activity of the permanent agent or 
substance. Matter, declared by Kant to be this 
substance, would, then, be the veritable determining 
and manifesting matrix of the appearances, and of 
their necessary sequence. And this Kant actually 
maintains towards the end of the "Zweite Analogic" 
There he says, " Where there is action, and conse- 
quently activity and force, there is also substance, and 
in it alone is to be sought the seat of the fruitful source 
of the appearances." And as Kant identifies sub- 
stance with matter, matter must then be the seat of 
the fruitful source of the appearances and their se- 
quence. 

This certainly sounds like outright Materialism. But 
with Kant this matter is not the transphenomenal 
material of the physicists; but only " substantia phe- 
nomenon," dependent itself on manifold existential 
conditions. And now, in consideration of these exist- 
ential conditions of phenomenal matter, we get an 
entirely different origin of* the appearances. Instead 
of matter being the veritable fruitful source, these same 



46 Philosophical Survey 

appearances turn out, on the contrary, to be formed 
by externally " given" sensorial material arising within 
space and time as pure a priori forms of intuition. 
Appearances are, however, not even then steadfastly 
formed; for being carried away, increment by incre- 
ment, with the flow of time, their fleeting moments 
have to be synthetized in order that they may really 
appear fully formed. And so likewise has their empir- 
ical apprehension to be synthetized, in order that it 
may simultaneously and connectedly apprehend them. 
And when, at last, a number of special faculties have 
achieved the empirical apprehension of full-formed 
appearances, together with their sequence, they have 
attained only incidental and subjective validity. In 
order that they may furthermore attain objective and 
universal validity, they have to be subjected to the 
objectifying categories actuated by the intelligible Ego, 
a procedure ab extra altogether incomprehensible. 
Kant himself recognizes that, if the definite sequence 
of appearances is not empirically given, then the objec- 
tifying category of causation cannot be applied. The 
category, therefore, does not really constitute the defi- 
nite sequence in time, but only renders it, in Kant's 
system, in some inexplicable manner universally valid. 
Kant with his keen penetration realizes the profound 
difficulties in the way of uniting the results of the 
passive sensorial reception of fleeting phenomena with 
their empirical apprehension and eventual systema- 
tized apperception. Time with its empirical content 
being in perpetual flux, how, then, can the apprehend- 
ing intellect, itself acting in time and roaming at ran- 
dom over given appearances, — how can it succeed in 
synthetically reconstituting the sum total of the fleet- 
ing and vanishing content so as to reproduce it with 



i 



Causation 47 

the help of " reproductive imagination" simultan- 
eously consolidated, and rendered thereupon univer- 
sally valid by being brought under the influence of the 
objectifying categories? Where in this purely ideal 
and intellectual construction of nature is the real nature 
of actual experience to be found? The vivid play of 
sensorial appearances, of which it consists, refuses being 
wholly eclipsed and swallowed up in the shadowy 
recesses of the imperceptible mundus intelligibilis . 

Kant's profound insight into the difficulties encoun- 
tered in trying to explain the origin of perceptual and 
conceptual modes of awareness, and their mutual rela- 
tion, opens an amazing vista into the depths and 
intricacies of the problem of causation, the leading 
problem of the Transcendental-Philosophy, as well as 
that of purely experiential systems. In his attempt 
to solve it, Kant had in his mind, first, that mathe- 
matical constructions are a priori synthetical; that, 
consequently, pure reason, regardless of any empirical 
experience, is in possession of synthetical efficiency, by 
force of which it can establish synthetical propositions 
which have necessary or universal validity. And 
then he found that all experience exists actually sys- 
tematized in ' ' the synthetic unity of apperception ' ' ; 
while, on the other hand, the empirical material is 
fractionally and incoherently given in sense-intuition. 
This being so, it must devolve upon the intellect or 
understanding to impart coherence, order, unity, and 
objective or universal validity to conscious experience. 

As regards the necessary or universal validity of the 
a priori synthetical propositions of mathematics, a 
problem which already interested foremost ancient 
thinkers, it can only be solved when it is shown why 
the subjective spatial perceptions and time-determi- 



48 Philosophical Survey 

nations of each individual come to be universally and 
objectively congruent or coincident with those of all 
other individuals; and why the general constructive 
norm and the geometrical properties of a definite kind 
of spatial form are binding, for all congruent spatial 
forms ; or the general numerical quantities of definite 
time-determinations are necessarily decisive for the 
same numerical quantities of all discrete things. 

Respecting the necessary or universal validity of 
each individual's unity of apperception, it may be 
asked, whether any individual is really in possession 
of a synthetic unity of apperception in which all senso- 
rial appearances are systematized with universal valid- 
ity ? Is it not, in fact, a laborious experiential task to 
validly ascertain the real constitution and connection 
of sense-given appearances, so as to derive therefrom 
a universally valid system of knowledge ? And when 
has it ever occurred that, without such laborious inves- 
tigation of actual experience, facts of nature, physical 
and psychical, have been rightly apperceived and 
rendered universally valid by means of a priori con- 
cepts ? 

Here also the fundamental fallacy consists in attrib- 
uting agency or causative efficiency to psychical states, 
while all psychical states are utterly forceless. Con- 
sequently psychical world-constructions are but phan- 
tom air-castles. 

Exact experimental science makes short work of 
the problem of substance, force, agency, and causation. 
Yet it succeeds above all other means in vastly and 
correctly increasing our knowledge of nature. But, 
though practically relying exclusively on exact experi- 
mental verification, it proceeds not wholly without the 
guidance of general a priori principles. In all scientific 



Causation 49 

research the ancient maxim, " Ex nihilo nihil fit" is 
essentially presupposed. And although like the philo- 
sophical Phenomenalists, the purely mathematical 
physicists profess to discard the realistic notions of sub- 
stance, force, and agency, aiming to reduce all natural 
occurrences to mere modes of motion, they only ignore, 
as unessential to their kinematic equations, the nature 
of that which moves, and of that which causes the 
motion. And it is in verity under the positive suppo- 
sition that there exists something that moves in definite 
ways, and something that causes the definite motions, 
that physical science has made its giant strides in the 
recognition of definite relations of dependence obtaining 
between perceptible phenomena. 

The eminently fruitful conceptions, on the one hand, 
of substantial matter and its indestructibility amid all 
its changing modes of appearance; and, on the other 
hand, of force or energy with its equal indestructibility 
in actuating accurately measurable changes; these 
highly useful conceptions of substance and agency have 
served as supreme guiding principles in the investiga- 
tion of physical occurrences. And they are themselves 
grounded on the ancient maxim: " Gigni de nihilo 
nihil, in nihilnm nil posse reverti." This is, indeed, 
fully acknowledged by J. R. Mayer, and virtually also 
by Grove, Helmholtz, and most thinking physicists; 
for the impossible construction of a perpetuum mobile 
is a priori accounted for by the same grounding axiom, 
that nothing can be got out of nothing. 

But neither Mayer nor Grove nor Helmholtz, nor 
any other physicist, has in the remotest degree proved 
the real existence, or disclosed the true nature, of what 
they call " matter" and what they call " energy." This 
insight, if it ever can be attained, has to be arrived at 



5° Philosophical Survey 

by a correct theory of knowledge. For the changing 
substance called " matter" is only inferentially revealed 
in perceptual appearances, and the change-inducing 
force or energy is only inferentially postulated as that 
which causes the mechanically equivalent changes. 
Moreover, as already mentioned, no qualitative dis- 
tinctions are at all accounted for by this mechanical 
method of interpretation; and these are, after all, the 
most essential integrant characteristics of perceptible 
objects. Worst of all, mechanical interpretation neces- 
sarily excludes all psychical occurrences from its rigor- 
ously closed concatenation of physical facts and occur- 
rences. The psychical manifestations that are running 
parallel to physical phenomena have here to be looked 
upon as mere ineffective, in truth, superfluous epiphe- 
nomena. And the ancient riddle of the interconnec- 
tion of mind and body and of body and mind remains 
wholly unsolved. 

It must be confessed, then, tnat the real agencies, 
which from within and from without are underlying 
and actuating the phenomenal play of awareness, that 
these phenomena-producing and propelling powers 
have never yet been disclosed. 

(4) THE PROBLEM OF AN EXTERNAL WORLD 

The search after the source and meaning of conscious 
phenomena meets on its way the problem of the real 
existence of what is called the external, or better, the 
extra -conscious, sense-transcending world, —a world of 
real, abiding entities, forming, somehow, a steadfast 
counterpart to the world figured in transitory percep- 
tion and to that represented in discoursive thought. 

The conceptual world, the world of ideas, rises, at 



External World 5 1 

times, into actual awareness from unconscious depths 
of our previously informed being, irrespective of actual 
sense-impressions. This is quite evident and indubi- 
table. The perceptual world, the world of sensorial 
presentations, though its phenomena compose to all 
appearance a sphere of existence outside the percipi- 
ent's own body, yet it has become certain to philo- 
sophical contemplation, and is actually corroborated by 
dreams, that these seemingly external phenomena are 
really modes of the percipient's own awareness. The 
so-called external world being thus apprehended as 
having its seat at one and the same time outside and 
inside of what we call our body, we are here brought 
before one of the most perplexing paradoxes still await- 
ing correct philosophical interpretation. It is certain 
that we perceive persons and things outside that which 
we perceive as our own body. And yet it is just as 
certain that all these perceptions arise within our own 
Being. 

Whether to the world phenomenally figured in 
perception there corresponds a world of real, extra-con- 
scious existents, may be considered the most momen- 
tous of all philosophical questions, and perhaps the 
most difficult to answer. On its decision pends the 
fate of pure Idealism, as well as that of other philosoph- 
ical systems. And it would surely be a delusion to 
believe that any satisfactory solution has yet been 
arrived at. It is the supreme task of epistemology to 
furnish such a solution. 

(5) UNIVERSALS AND PARTICULARS 

Another phase of the never-relinquished effort to 
discover the true seat and nature of permanent and 



Si Philosophical Survey 

efficient reality has played a prominent part in philo- 
sophical discussions ever since the unchangeable One- 
and-All of the Eleatics was opposed to the Heraclidian 
perpetual flux of perceptible phenomena. Plato and 
Aristotle based their respective ontological views on the 
fundamental contrast obtaining between the particu- 
lars of sense and the universals of reason. 

Plato fashioned his archetypal world by placing the 
seat of true reality in the universals as apprehended by 
reason, and by holding the particulars to be mere ecty- 
pal appearances, or perishing things receiving their 
being and significance from partial or semblative par- 
ticipation in the transcendent reality of the universal. 
Aristotle, on the contrary, arrived at sensorial Experi- 
entialism by declaring the particulars given through 
sense to possess full reality, the universals being impli- 
cated predicates of the same. After more than two 
thousand years of most searching discussion essentially 
the same controversy remains still unsettled. Platonic 
and Aristotelean views still confront each other. We 
have still among us Scotus Erigenas and Roscellines, 
Abelards and Occams. 

The transubstantiation of logical relations into meta- 
physical entities culminates consistently in logical Pan- 
theism or so-called Panlogism. On the other hand, the 
attribution of true reality to sense-apparent things of 
an outside world leads to Materialism, hitherto the 
general position of modern natural science. As to the 
ascription of fundamental reality to the sensorial ele- 
ments themselves and their combinations, such senso- 
rial Idealism, still prevalent, has always led and must 
always lead to pure Phenomenalism, into which our 
most advanced physics and psychics have at present 
helplessly drifted. 



Universals and Particulars S3 

Here we are face to face again with the fundamental 
dilemma of philosophical interpretation. All we are 
directly aware of is what is actually given in our 
conscious content. But all conscious awareness, how- 
ever systematized, is as such in constant flux, and 
consists of nothing but insubstantial, perishing phe- 
nomena. We have here, therefore, pure Phenomenal- 
ism, or nothing but a fleeting panoramic show within 
the one present moment of lapsing time. This, in 
truth, is the inevitable consistent outcome of taking 
the conscious content to signify nothing beyond its 
own psychical self. 

Despite the dialectic gymnastics of our Parmeni- 
deses and Protagorases, and despite the pretended 
rejection of realistic implications by our mathema- 
tical physicists, a pure phenomenalistic science is an 
impossibility. An array of t acidly assumed realistic 
presuppositions imparts in such attempts to the 
evanescent phenomena the indispensable modicum 
of support and staying quality. For our accumulat- 
ing experience, and its rational continuity, forces 
thinkers intuitively and speculatively to transcend the 
phenomenal play of momentary awareness by postu- 
lating some enduring reality as the preserving and 
issuing matrix of our memorized, systematized, and 
cognized experience. 

The real puzzle here is, that something so transient 
and evanescent as the entire conscious content with 
all its particulars and universals actually is; that the 
successive content of this fleeting moment of aware- 
ness is nevertheless by some transcendent means pre- 
served as accumulated and systematized experience, 
and is recognized as such. This transphenomenal 
harboring and resuscitation of what has constituted 



54 Philosophical Survey 

the vanished past, is what John Mill called the "final 
inexplicability . ' ' Surely no approximately satisfactory 
answer has yet been given to this weighty question. 
And the unsettled state of philosophy is principally 
due to the fact that no valid proof or demonstration 
of the real seat and nature of the preserving and issu- 
ing matrix of conscious phenomena, and of their 
latently cumulated and systematized import, has yet 
been forthcoming. It cannot possibly be found in 
anything that forms part of the conscious content, 
not in its sensorial particulars and their perceptual 
combinations, nor in its conceptual universals and 
their implicated relations, nor in the entire content of 
the moment of actual apprehension. For these are 
all alike fleeting modes of awareness, which can no- 
wise constitute their own permanent matrix, nor the 
apprehending subject to whom the awareness accrues. 
It does not avail here to postulate with Materialism 
as permanent material things the perceptual particu- 
lars themselves, declaring them to be extra-conscious 
existents that compose the real universe, and of whose 
peculiar arrangement and activity in organisms the 
conscious content is a functional outcome. That 
which goes by the name of matter can nowise produce 
and apprehend conscious states. No kind of motion 
or functional agitation of what are called material 
compounds can be conceived as resulting in conscious 
awareness. This is becoming more and more generally 
admitted ; but not long ago mind was believed to be a 
functional outcome of matter by most scientists. 

On the other hand, to postulate with intellectual 
Idealism conceptual universals as phenomena-produc- 
ing entities or faculties, amounts merely to declaring 
a special constituent of the conscious content to be its 



Innate Faculties 55 

own source of emanation, and that of all the rest. For 
we have no other actual experience of universals, 
save that contained in the conscious content. All 
realistic inferences therefrom are, consequently, of a 
nature transcending what appears in consciousness, 
and have as mere inferences to be epistemologically 
made good, in order to be acceptable as valid. Instead 
of it, we have on the one hand the conceptual totality 
of the conscious content deified, and on the other 
hand its perceptual manifold materialized. Criticism 
in its turn reduces the conceptual Deity to a ''Grenz- 
begriff"; and all the wealth of the sense-revealed, 
perceptible universe it takes to be continuously 
originated from a timeless and spaceless world, and 
to be as continuously dissolved into it, emptied of all 
experiential qualitative and quantitative distinctions. 
No appreciation in all this of the endlessly laborious 
travail that fashions perceptible things and perceiv- 
ing individuals. Despite all the strenuous efforts 
of Idealism, Materialism, and Criticism, to reach by 
legitimate means of valid demonstration the efficient, 
permanent reality which identically underlies the 
phenomenal play of actual awareness, of which all 
universals and all particulars, as actually experienced, 
form an integrant part; despite of it all, philosophy 
finds itself still adrift on the dissolving waves of ever- 
lapsing time. 

(6) INNATE FACULTIES OR DISPOSITIONS 

Related to the perennial controversy concerning 
universals and particulars is another contention which 
has greatly agitated modern philosophy. The task 
here was to determine the kind of cognitive equipment 
which the thinking individual brings with him into 



5 6 Philosophical Survey 

the world. Whether the mind, to start with, is a 
blank, or whether it is innately stored with essential 
knowledge consisting of definite ideas fully performed 
before the acquisition of post-natal experience? Or, 
again, whether only definite dispositions are innately 
preexisting which determine the cast and order in 
which post-natal experience is received? Extreme 
Sensationalism believes in tabula rasa, extreme Intui- 
tionalism in innate ideas, and Criticism in preformed 
dispositions. The solution of this problem so important 
to psychology, and, indeed, to all other philosophical 
disciplines, has lately been essentially aided by facts 
of organic evolution. And it is to be expected that 
in the light of vital organization it will receive further 
elucidation. 

(7) SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 

Likewise opened for solution by the many-sided 
fundamental puzzle of philosophy, how and by what 
agency steadfast knowledge is extracted from the 
random flow of phenomenal appearances, to what 
kind of reality it actually refers, and in what kind of 
permanent matrix it has its latent seat; opened by 
it is another of those perplexing questions which has 
conspicuously figured in philosophical discussions. 
The question here alluded to is that of subject and 
object in cognition. What is constituting in actual 
experience the object of knowledge, and what the 
knowing subject, or that which apprehends and knows 
what is presented as object? 

The conscious content is all that any way emerges 
into awareness. And arising, as it does, in the perpet- 
ual flux of time as a unitary, all-revealing moment of 
actual experience, it admits nowise of being bisected 



Subject and Object 57 

into object and subject. It is in its entirety, as soon 
as consciously manifest, an apprehended or known 
object. To be consciously aware of anything is to 
apprehend or to know that much of it at least. Of 
course, there occur all possible gradations of distinct- 
ness and comprehension with which modes of aware- 
ness are presented and cognized, inclusive of their 
complemental psychical implications. For all directly 
awakened cognition implies as its complement resusci- 
tation and recognition of a more or less comprehensive 
complex of conscious states previously systematized. 
The presentation and cognition of a directly awak- 
ened mode of consciousness serves thus as a temporal 
signal, whereby the complemental complex of previ- 
ously experienced conscious states is representatively 
summoned into awareness and recognized as already 
known. 

I cognize, for instance, a certain odor as sensorially 
aroused and now actually present, and recognize it as 
a constituent of a definite complex of previously expe- 
rienced conscious states called a violet or a rose, as the 
case may be. That which awakens the awareness of 
the definite odor awakens in consequence of it also the 
awareness of its remembered conscious implications. 
But shall I find the real violet or the real rose among 
my remembered conscious states? Where, then, have 
these their real being? And whence do the remem- 
bered conscious states themselves issue from latency 
into actual awareness on presentation of the sensori- 
ally awakened signal that summons them forth? 
Furthermore, what kind of being or subject experiences 
this complex of conscious states? These are the essen- 
tial questions. 

As regards the paramount importance of directly 



5 8 Philosophical Survey 

awakened signals or signs in relation to conscious rep- 
resentation and recognition of previous experience, we 
need only consider how the volitional production of 
linguistic signs gives rise to the rationally systematized 
conscious reinstatement of what they are signs of, 
rendering thinking possible. Yet linguistic signs are 
altogether experientially inculcated after birth. 

The recognized object forms directly always part of 
the conscious content. And all conscious states are 
objects of cognition. But as to the agent or subject to 
whom experience accrues and who apprehends and 
knows, neither Hume nor Kant, nor any other candid 
observer, has ever been able to detect him anywhere 
within the conscious content, as forming part of present 
or remembered experience. Hume concluded in ac- 
cordance with his Nonsubstantialism, that no such 
agent exists. Kant believed that it dwelled as intelli- 
gible Ego in a supernatural sphere, and that unrecog- 
nized it accompanies all cognition as awareness that 
it is I who knows. Fichte asserted that it is an all- 
positing activity; Shelling that it is " Subject-Object"; 
Hegel that it is the " Idea." Common sense takes the 
perceptible human individual to be the bearer and 
knower of the conscious content. But, if so, what is 
the real nature of the perceptible individual who expe- 
riences and knows? 

The particular perceptual forms, the so-called ob- 
jects or things, which intrude their presence into 
consciousness with compelling insistence, seem preemi- 
nently to single themselves out of the conscious content 
as objects of knowledge, leaving the unextended com- 
ponents in the background as contrasted subjective 
states. The whole of consciousness becomes thus 
seemingly divided into a "me" and a "not-me," or 



Subject and Object 59 

at least into object and subject states. But forming 
part of the same object of knowledge together with the 
extended perceptual objects are found also, not only 
their own remembered so-called " ideas," and the wholly 
unextended verbal signs signifying them; but likewise 
whatever relations may become consciously revealed 
as obtaining between them and the entire rest of the 
conscious content. In fact, as already stated, the 
conscious content in its entirety, with all its cognitive, 
affective, and conative modes of awareness is, as such, 
the apprehended and known object. The knowing 
subject appears nowise in actual awareness. It is 
therefore an unwarrantable procedure to preassume as 
such some fanciful agent, in order to gain a substantial 
support for the evanescent constituents of the con- 
scious content, and also a consolidating power by force 
of which they are then held to be consistently synthe- 
tized into valid rational knowledge. If such a subject 
there really is, its existence and nature have first to 
be scientifically inferred from definite data given in 
actual experience, before it can be legitimately used in 
explanation of such experience. 1 

At the bottom of all these philosophical riddles lies 
the problem of the nature and source of what is con- 
sciously manifest as memory. Where, indeed, can be 
its seat, and in what does really consist this mysterious 
vehicle wherein past experience latently abides, ready 
on occasion to issue significantly into conscious aware- 
ness as accumulated and ordered knowledge? Some 
steadfastly organizing power is here evidently at work 
weaving, coordinating, and consolidating into perma- 

1 This is a cardinal point upon which Dr. Shadworth Hodgson 
has so emphatically, lucidly, and decisively insisted. 



60 Philosophical Survey 

nent structure the lapsing moments of casual experi- 
ence. This systematizing and substantializing power 
cannot possibly be found among the transient phenom- 
enal appearances of consciousness itself. It obviously 
achieves its results in a region transcending conscious 
awareness. To give to such extra-conscious agency 
the name either of mind or body, as is usually done, is 
again to hypostatize into substantial permanency some- 
thing known only as conscious phenomenal appear- 
ances ; for as such only do we actually know what we 
call our mind, and what we call our body. 



The general upshot of these critical remarks, applied 
to some of the principal problems of philosophy, is 
simply that all psychical or idealistic Phenomenalism 
leads inevitably to unmitigated Nihilism, to a phantas- 
magoria of evanescent meaningless appearances, arising 
out of Nothingness, floating an instant in the unsub- 
stantial media of subjective space and time, and vanish- 
ing again into the same vacancy whence they emerged. 
Nihilism is what consciousness in its own secluded 
sphere is exclusively freighted with. And no way has 
yet been found out of the magic circle of phantom- 
peopled Solipsism. It is only by a correct interpretation 
of the realistic implications of conscious phenom- 
ena, arrived at by aid of a valid theory of knowledge, 
that the significance of psychical manifestations, and 
with it the significance of our own Being, and its life 
in this world, can be philosophically determined. 



III. THE IMMEDIATE SOURCE OF ALL 
KNOWLEDGE 

Modern philosophy has proved that that which 
is consciously revealed consists directly of nothing but 
modes of awareness. These may be classified as feel- 
ings, sensations, perceptions, emotions, volitions, and 
thoughts or ideas; or more succinctly as affections, 
conations, and cognitions. One and all, these have 
no other experienced existence, save as constituents 
of the actual conscious content. 

This cardinal truth, firmly established by modern 
philosophy, leaves no doubt that our individual con- 
scious states are the sole direct medium of revelation, 
and that everything consciously present consists out 
and out of actual modes of awareness. That which 
consciously emerges from unconscious depths is there- 
fore the exclusive vehicle through which all knowledge 
of reality is conveyed. Reality becomes manifest to 
us living beings solely within the medium of our 
consciousness. This truth, when once recognized, 
appears almost self-evident. 

The entire conscious content with all its wealth of 
knowledge is, however, obviously a transient phenom- 
enon ; something not only emerging, dwindling, van- 
ishing, and being renewed as a whole ; but something 
whose constituents, while forming among themselves 
changeful configurations, are severally and collectively 
in constant flux. This moment there is consciously 
present a complex of certain feelings, sensations, per- 

6. 



62 Philosophical Survey 

ceptions, emotions, and thoughts which make up the 
content of our awareness for the time being. The 
next moment these same feelings, sensations, percep- 
tions, emotions, and thoughts have completely van- 
ished out of existence, having been superseded by a 
new set of similar transcient phenomena. 

The flowing conscious content forms thus our one 
moment of ever-renewed awareness. And, as such, it 
can obviously possess no modicum of self -stability, no 
substantial existence to save it from utter vanishment 
and annihilation. Nevertheless, it is evident that 
this kaleidoscopic play of evanescent conscious states 
is all that in any case is immediately and actually 
experienced. Nothing whatever is at any time con- 
sciously present but just these configurations and 
combinations of flowing and vanishing phenomena. 
They yield the only available data out of which the 
entire fabric of knowledge is constituted. And as 
everything that composes our consciously revealed 
microcosm turns out to be woven out of such transitory 
phenomenal appearances, pure Phenomenalism is the 
necessary outcome of reasoning which does not tran- 
scend in its interpretation that which is thus given 
in actual awareness. 

It is all-important to philosophy to recognize this 
utter phenomenality of all conscious awareness, its 
out and out forceless, transitory, and evanescent con- 
sistency. The failure to realize it lies at the root of 
most philosophical perplexity. The attribution of 
reality, substantiality, power, permanency, self-signifi- 
cance to conscious phenomena has been, and is still, 
the chief obstacle in the way of a consistent philosoph- 
ical interpretation of nature. Heedless of the evanes- 
cent and forceless consistency of conscious phenomena, 



Source of all Knowledge 63 

the advocates of mental Atomism substantialize cer- 
tain segregated elementary constituents of the con- 
scious content, and construct therewith their wholly 
insubstantial fabric of sensorial Idealism. The advo- 
cates of Conceptualism, on the other hand, hyposta- 
size into substantial permanency as efficient agents 
or power-endowed faculties other conscious modes. 
While, in their turn, the Materialists seize upon mere 
phenomena of sight and touch as their building mate- 
rial, declaring them to be indestructible, extra-conscious 
entities. 

World-constructions with unsubstantial ephemeral 
conscious phenomena must necessarily dissolve into 
thin air under the hand of their makers, unless these 
artfully manage to introduce from extra-conscious 
sources all that is required to impart coherence and 
stability to their all too tenuous and volatilizing 
building material. Hume, for example, in order to 
impart consistency and permanency to his sensorial 
material, unwarrantably and inconsistently substanti- 
alized it, making fictitious permanent entities of his 
vivid "impressions" and their remembered "ideas." 
Hume, the professed Phenomenalist and Nonsub- 
stantialist, introduces, moreover, surreptitiously into 
his system eminently potent extra-conscious agencies, 
such as memory, ability to cling together or associate, 
habit, and the like. And so are all nominalistic or 
sensualistic Idealists compelled to have recourse to 
extra-conscious, efficient agencies in order to provide 
some consistency and stability for their ideal struct- 
ures. For can there be anything more unsubstantial 
and fugitive than a touch, a sound, a sight, a taste, a 
smell, a feeling, an emotion, an idea ; in fact, an " impres- 
sion, " a "sensation," a conscious state of any sort? 



64 Philosophical Survey 

Surely, nothing can be less fit wherewith to construct 
the solid, permanent world we are actually conversant 
with. Evidently what has been hypothetically postu- 
lated as substantially subsisting is not the present 
conscious state as such; but the extra -conscious 
source whence numberless reproductions of its like 
have emanated in the past, and are expected to 
emanate again into awareness on future occasions. 
The extra-conscious potential sensibilities, through 
whose actuation the transitory modes of awareness 
arise, are here the abiding modes of existence, and not 
the modes of awareness themselves. Yet whole 
systems of interpretation, believed to be eminently 
scientific, are still woven out of such purely ephemeral 
stuff as sensations and other modes of awareness 
obviously are. 

Kant, who recognized the phenomenal and tran- 
sient consistency of conscious appearances, believed to 
have discovered permanent modes of intellectual 
synthesis, by means of which the random and fleeting 
manifold of sense becomes converted into steadfast, 
universally valid knowledge. But the truth is that, 
despite his strenuous endeavor to reach transphenom- 
enal reality, he never really escaped out of the spectral 
domain of pure Phenomenalism. His synthetic cate- 
gories are only modes in which he found the constitu- 
ents of the conscious content already combined; mere 
modes of phenomenal coexistence and sequence devoid 
of realistic efficiency. They constitute nothing what- 
ever transcending the conscious content itself ; neither 
on the side of sense, nor on that of reason. No knowl- 
edge of the real things-in-themselves on the sensorial 
side is at all attained by the categories. Nor are they 
found efficient to yield the remotest knowledge of the 



Source of all Knowledge 65 

intelligible world which Kant believed to exist beyond 
individual consciousness. They exhaust their alleged 
synthetic power wholly within the sphere of the 
individual's sensorial awareness among nothing but 
phenomenal appearances, utterly impotent to convert 
such fleeting modes of awareness into permanent 
transphenomenal knowledge. 

The assumption of a real world of unknowable 
things-in-themselves or noumena, which by affecting 
the individual's sensibility are causing it to be filled 
with the appearances which constitute the raw- 
material of knowledge; this assumption is with Kant 
a mere matter of unproved common-sense conviction, 
confirmed by what he had learned from Hume concern- 
ing sensorial experience. Hume himself, more con- 
sistently, ignored altogether the origin of his vivid 
impressions. And still less founded on proof of any 
kind is Kant's postulation of an intelligible, super- 
natural realm of subsistence, whence he draws, and in 
his system is forced to draw, all the efficiency and sub- 
stantiality, which he makes his categories vicariously 
impart to the sensorial material. Kant's "Trans- 
cendental-Philosophie " is, in truth, as pure a Phenom- 
enalism and Nonsubstantialism as the nominalistic 
Idealism of Hume. Only that Hume imparts fictitious 
substantiality and efficiency to the random sensorial 
material, while Kant imparts it just as fictitiously to 
his categories and the " Bewusztsein uberhaupt. " 

Hegel, the typical Conceptualist and Absolutist, 
after having individually gathered experiential knowl- 
edge from every available source, and having it syste- 
matically stored away in extra -conscious latency as his 
own securely memorized possession ; after all this 
laborious self-preparation he made himself and the 



66 Philosophical Survey 

world believe that his own assiduously generalized 
and consolidated knowledge was in verity issuing as 
conceptual reality, not from the receptacle where he 
had actually stored it, but quite independently as 
self -sub sis ting conceptual evolution from out the 
plenary being of an eternally preexisting Absolute. 
Mere memory of randomly gathered superficial experi- 
ence, systematized within the individual being of the 
philosopher himself, is here obviously the veritable 
source whence all this unctuously sublime conceptual 
display actually proceeds. 

Amid such alleged ideal world-constructions, which 
the teeming fancy of the master, and that of his 
many world-evolving disciples have palmed upon a 
credulous audience, it has been left out of considera- 
tion, whether to the evolutional performances within 
individual consciousness there corresponds in reality, 
something super-individual and universal outside of it 
or beyond it. 

The inevasible epistemological problem is precisely 
to find a legitimate way out of the charmed circle of 
individual consciousness into the universal world of 
genuine reality. Hegel attempts to reach it by a 
salto martale into vacancy. 

Kant, one of the most conscientious, painstaking, and 
epoch-making thinkers, after laboring most assiduously 
at this supreme task of reaching transphenomenal 
knowledge, had to confess that only that which appears 
to us individually in space and time can be an object 
of knowledge. " Noumenorum non datur scientia" is 
his emphatic conclusion. Fichte, on the contrary, 
evaded the insurmountable solipsistic barrier by 
boldly declaring active consciousness, as such, to be 
the creator of the world of reality at large, thus virtually 



Source of All Knowledge 67 

identifying his individual experience and thought with 
universal Reality and Being. His followers, and he 
himself, tried, later, to amend the prodigious solipsistic 
pretentions of such a world-creating Ego, walking the 
streets in the shape of a German professor of philoso- 
phy, by completely ignoring the impenetrable boundary, 
encompassing individual consciousness, and declaring its 
wholly secluded, phenomenal, and evanescent content 
to be the real permanent content of an all-comprising 
universal consciousness. 

But can there be a more arbitrary and fanciful 
procedure than that to seize upon what we experience 
as volitions, or as concepts, or on whatever other 
constituents of individual consciousness, severing them 
from their complement in the unitary conscious con- 
tent, and from their real matrix in the conscious 
individual, and transposing them then generalized and 
substantially hypostasized into unknowable regions 
of extra-conscious permanency as self -subsisting and 
self-acting entities? The principal motive that urges 
thinkers to adopt such unscientific procedure lies 
altogether outside the sphere of actual experience. 
It is inspired by the mystic faith in an absolute Being, 
from whose eternal totality of existence all individu- 
ation and all knowledge is believed to proceed. 

The primal source of Being and Becoming is, indeed, 
a mystery beyond human ken; but neither Plotinus 
nor Spinoza, neither Leibnitz nor Schelling, neither 
Hegel nor Schopenhauer, have in the least succeeded 
in rationally evolving our actual experience of. nature 
from an absolute Substance, or from an universal Intel- 
ligence, or from an omnipotent Will. It is, indeed, an 
irrational endeavor to try to conceive how an eternal, 
unchangeable, unitary Being can emanate or produce 



68 Philosophical Survey 

the changeful manifold of temporal occurrences. 
Nothing changeless can be rightly conceived as the 
origin, source, or matrix of change ; and nothing indi- 
visible as the producer of manifoldness. Here we are 
face to face again with the Heraclidean and Eleatic 
dilemma. Fichte and Hegel incline towards the Hera- 
clidean horn. With them the world is an ever-flowing 
product of rational activity. Schelling and Schopen- 
hauer, on the other hand, incline essentially towards 
the Eleatic horn. They conceive the creation of the 
world as an irrational act on the part of the primordial 
One and All ; in fact, as an apostatic wilful and sinful 
shattering of its self-contained perfection and repose. 

Besides the mystic faith in an Absolute, there is an 
experiential reason which urges such philosophers as 
believe in a plurality of conscious beings to merge the 
content of the sundry individual consciousnesses into 
an all-comprising universal consciousness. This con- 
sists in the inevitable conclusion, that these separate 
consciousnesses recognize one and the same trans- 
cendent universe, in which their individual bearers 
move and have their being. But it is exactly the scien- 
tific justification of this self-transcending inference 
which forms the fundamental epistemological problem, 
without whose correct solution there can be no valid 
insight into the realm of extra-conscious or transphe- 
nomenal subsistence. Being aware of nothing but our 
own individual conscious content, how can we know 
that there exist other conscious beings besides ourself , 
or, indeed, any individual bearer of this conscious 
content? And, if so, what is its true nature? More- 
over, what gives us the right to conclude that there is 
existing beyond our individual consciousness a trans- 
phenomenal universe? These, surely, are the vital 



Source of all Knowledge 69 

questions. No a priori Ontology, no Panlogism, can 
here be allowed to transubstantialize transient phe- 
nomena of actual experience into permanent states of 
universal Being. Only an experiential epistemology 
scientifically corroborated and verified may perhaps 
to some extent accomplish this supreme transcendental 
task. 

Experientially inclined thinkers have recourse to 
various devices, in order to impart ideal consistency 
and permanency to conscious phenomena. Conscious 
existence is thus sometimes regarded as a coherent 
series of abiding conscious experience, or as a contin- 
uous stream of enduring consciousness. This, how- 
ever, amounts to ascribing continuous existence to 
conscious states, as such, after they have passed out 
of awareness, or have ceased to be conscious. But the 
ceaseless flux of time, in which all conscious states have 
their being, inevitably draws them along into the van- 
ishment of the irrecoverable past. The conscious con- 
tent consists not of an existential continuity of the 
identical conscious phenomena, but in a focus of ever- 
arising, ever-dwindling, ever-renewed conscious mani- 
festations; and it is as such that it constitutes the 
all-containing moment of actual experience. If not 
renewed from moment to moment; if its evanescent 
phenomena were not instantly replaced by other more 
or less equivalent phenomena, conscious awareness 
would have no consistency whatever, and the entire 
microcosmic world of consciousness would the next 
moment have faded out of existence, as is actually the 
case on falling asleep. 

To escape the nihilistic implications of pure Phe- 
nomenalism, or genuine mental Idealism, another sub- 
terfuge is at times resorted to. A conscious state may 



7° Philosophical Survey 

display in actual awareness all grades of vividness, from 
faintest to brightest appearance. On the strength 
of this, it has been hypothetically assumed that they 
may grow so faint as to dwindle altogether out of aware- 
ness without losing their essential nature as conscious 
states. They are imagined to continue in existence as 
such below the threshold of actual awareness, and then 
on occasion to reemerge above it as identical entities. 
But to be aware of something is evidently the same as 
to be conscious of it. There is no awareness apart of 
special modes of awareness, no consciousness apart of 
special conscious states. Consequently, the conscious 
states, as such, have their existence only in actual con- 
scious awareness, and cease altogether to exist as soon 
as they are no longer consciously apprehended, as soon 
as they disappear out of the all-revealing moment of 
actual awareness. 

Of course, conscious states, our only medium of act- 
ual experience, must emerge from some permanent 
source of emanation. They cannot arise out of nothing. 
And, besides, they carry with them the assurance of 
representing past experience. Here the task is to 
demonstrate the seat and nature of the emanating 
matrix, and to explain the paradoxical fact, that some- 
thing that has itself ceased to exist can, nevertheless, 
be existentially represented by something that comes 
into manifest existence at some future time. 

It is safe to say that this eminently paradoxical fact 
of experience has never yet been satisfactorily ex- 
plained. 



IV. THE INDIVIDUAL MICROCOSM 

The out and out conscious consistency of our world- 
revelation, and the utter phenomenality of the con-, 
scious states through which such revelation is given, 
are facts readily discernible, and open from moment to 
moment to incontestable verification. A kaleidoscopic 
play of fleeting modes of awareness is all that is imme- 
diately and actually experienced. Consequently, it is 
the only available source whence the entire fabric of 
knowledge is derived, and the only medium in whose 
light we conduct our life. The task at hand is to dis- 
cover how, by means of such perishable data, the seem- 
ingly steadfast inner and outer worlds we actually 
recognize and intuitively believe in become con- 
sciously established. 

It is evident that anything like stability and effi- 
ciency, if at all to be found, cannot possibly belong to 
what is consciously subsisting, not to the world expe- 
rienced as a conscious phenomenon. Even Berkeley, 
the strenuous expounder of nominalistic Idealism, 
found that "there is nothing of power or agency" in 
V all our ideas, sensations, or the things which we per- 
ceive," "that one idea or object of thought cannot 
produce or make any alteration in another." All 
modes of awareness are, in fact, forceless phenomena 
involved in the ceaseless flux of time, and with it neces- 
sarily lapse from moment to moment out of awareness 
into the irrecoverable past. 

How these vanished modes of awareness come to be 

71 



72 Philosophical Survey 

successively replaced by equivalent or similar modes; 
and how by means of the newly arising states the 
rational continuity of conscious life, past, present, and 
future, is maintained ; these are fundamental problems 
which a theory of knowledge has to solve. It is clear 
that a world built of nothing but ephemeral stuff, such 
as conscious phenomena are really made of, would at 
best be but a dream. And, even then, the dream could 
not be self-subsisting and self-sustaining, but would 
necessitate a dreamer persistently dreaming it. Now 
the world actually apprehended by means of conscious 
states, the so-called common-sense world, this appar- 
ently enduring world of suns and planets, of boundless 
expanse and infinite time, of our familiar earth and its 
teeming forms of life, including our own being with its 
consistent life -history and abiding sense of personal 
identity ; all these consciously revealed modes of more 
or less steadfast existence must surely be sustained by 
something incomparably more coherent and con- 
sistent than the mere evanescent appearances of a 
mind-woven dream could possibly be. 

It has, therefore, first of all, to be explained how the 
stable common-sense world we are all conscious of has 
come to be constituted out of the evanescent modes of 
awareness which compose the conscious content. It 
is, however, as matters now stand, in our highly devel- 
oped and richly furnished consciousness, no easy task 
to distinguish within its ready-made world-view that 
which is actually given in the fleeting conscious content 
from what is, moreover, inferentially assumed as impli- 
cated in its revelations; no easy task to disentangle 
what in our individual consciousness constitutes our 
own and other bodies and minds, from what we infer 
them to be in reality beyond our awareness of them, 



The Individual Microcosm 73 

which consists of nothing but transient conscious 
states. 

In our developed consciousness modes of awareness 
are elaborately established resultants of former expe- 
rience, which in the course of time have accrued to us 
unitary beings, endowed with preformed w T ays of sensi- 
bility and receptibility. Present modes of awareness 
are, consequently, for our cognition intricately signifi- 
cant complexes of direct and indirect signs, signifying 
more or less comprehensively systematized groups of 
formerly experienced facts. And the experience here 
directly signified forms part of the vast fund of latent 
knowledge we call our memory. Introspectiyely iso- 
lated conscious states, as such, are therefore to be 
regarded as mere signs, whose own mental character- 
istics and conscious composition do not contain or 
reveal the nature of what they are signs of. They 
only symbolically suggest the existence and meaning 
of that which they symbolically imply. A specific 
odor, for instance, may signalize a remembered species 
of flower; a definite colored form signalize a certain 
group of previously known tangible objects; a predi- 
cated quality something belonging to a previously 
known class of subjects. 

In fruitful introspection it is this memorized and 
systematized knowledge that is explored, not the nature 
and the direct actual connections of the conscious facts 
as composing immediate awareness. A word — to 
bring forward an extreme case — when introspectively 
contemplated is not to be considered merely as the 
present sensorial feeling of articulation or sound that 
constitutes it, but it is to be apprehended as a pregnant 
sign representing a definite group of latent knowledge. 
An introspected visual percept, a landscape, for in- 



74 Philosophical Survey 

stance, does not merely mean the sensations that go 
to compose it, not the mere shaded and colored forms 
in actual awareness, which are only definite specifi- 
cations of visual space. These are obviously but 
consciously present signs of an entire assemblage of 
perceptual objects with their accompaniment of asso- 
ciated experience previously gathered; objects called 
the "soil," the "vegetation," the "sundry forms of 
life," all trailing from latent memory rich complements 
of signalized knowledge. These rather trivial remarks 
would be almost superfluous if the purely phenome- 
nalistic attempt was not actually made to derive 
instructive meaning from analysis of the direct com- 
position of the conscious states immediately present in 
awareness without reference to anything beyond. 

The cumulative representation of knowledge by means 
of conscious signs renders possible the issuing into 
simultaneous awareness of an extensive reach of previ- 
ously acquired and systematized experience. Previous 
experience is being thus ever more or less completely 
recollected into each moment of actual awareness. 
And it is preeminently this representative concentra- 
tion of knowledge in the compass of each successive 
moment of awareness that renders our conduct in life 
consistently and rationally governable. There exists 
no other conscious apprehension of gathered experi- 
ence but that which is momentarily present in aware- 
ness. And only by means of representative signs, 
signifying whole provinces of previous experience, is 
such recollection into practical simultaneousness ren- 
dered possible. In just such representative simultan- 
eousness of conscious states, with all their revived or 
implied associated significations, consists what is called 
the "present," in contradistinction of what are called 



The Individual Microcosm 75 

the " past" and the " future." It is the essential char- 
acteristic of our mental organization, and the real vital 
function of our consciousness, to be so constituted as 
to focus previous, time-scattered experience into pres- 
ent awareness. And it is only by means of involuted 
systems of representative signs that this can be effected. 
Present awareness brings with it the resuscitation and 
recognition of past experience, involving expectation 
of similar experience in the future. What we have 
formerly experienced as our own being and the world 
at large dwells systematized in unconscious latency as 
our so-called memory. It becomes consciously re- 
vealed in our ever-renewed moment of more or less 
comprehensive awareness. The focussed content of 
these moments of awareness, signifying vast domains 
of gathered experience, constitutes not only our sole 
apprehension of existence, but also the conscious micro- 
cosm whose affective, conative, and cognitive revela- 
tions form the exclusive guiding medium of our actions, 
We act altogether on the information of such repre- 
sented and recognized experience arising in our moment 
of conscious awareness. The direct conscious execu- 
tion of our actions is immediately aimed at what is 
consciously revealed. The chair I perceive and intend 
to move, and which I am now moving, forms certainly 
part of my conscious content. It was as such that it 
became the direct object at which my activity was 
aimed. We really move and act exclusively within the 
sphere or our conscious content and amid its revealed 
appearances. Whether to these revealed conscious 
appearances, whether to the perceptual chair, for 
instance, there corresponds a permanent, extra-con- 
scious existent subsisting independently of being 
casually perceived; this all - important question, 



76 Philosophical Survey 

though practically doubted by no one, constitutes 
theoretically the fundamental problem of epistemology. 
As all we are actually aware of consists of conscious 
states, by what special conscious modes do we become 
aware of what we call our own body? The direct 
awareness of our own body forms the groundwork of 
all other awareness. Consciously given, as foundation 
of our bodily awareness or its self -feeling, is a massive 
expanse of complex inner sensations, whose steady 
flow in time is felt as something constant, though its 
multifold constituents are more or less changing in 
character and varying in respective prominence. These 
fundamental bodily feelings prove on scientific inves- 
tigation to be dependent on certain organic activities 
and needs, and are in consequence called "organic" 
or "internal" feelings or sensations (Gemeingefuhle). 
The vital movement in which life is found to consist 
its breathing, extending to what is visually revealed 
as the living components of its tissues; its circulation 
coursing through minutest capillaries; its digestion 
involving a vast area of glandular activity; in fine all 
its manifold ceaseless commotion which ministers to 
the vital play of functional disintegration and 'reinte- 
gration, and which pulsates in all parts of our organic 
frame, and creates the fundamental feelings of organic 
need: hunger, thirst, sleepiness, suffocation; all this 
makes up the complex activity upon which our abiding 
feeling of bodily existence and extension is primordi- 
ally dependent. This being the case, can Idealists 
persist in sincerely believing that without such vital, 
organic commotion they could have any feeling or 
awareness of self -existence of whatever kind, and con- 
sequently awareness of anything at all? Yet they 
have consistently to dcnv the real existence of vital 



The Individual Microcosm 77 

organization ; the real existence of their own body and 
of that of all other beings. There is no escape for them 
from this all- volatilizing predicament. 

The vague feeling of bodily existence and expanse, 
when centralized by means of a convergent neural 
system, becomes more or less definitely circumscribed 
by a graduated continuity of sensations, arising in 
what is consciously perceived as the cutaneous surface 
of the body. And this organically felt form gets to 
be still more distinctly outlined, and its parts more 
clearly distinguished, from within by specific ''local 
signs" and feelings of movement, and from without by 
contact sensations of pressure, temperature, and feel- 
ings pleasurable or painful. 

Such direct organic or internal awareness of our 
body, quite irrespective of special sensorial or external 
awareness by means of tactual or visual exploration; 
such internal awareness, together with our conscious- 
ness of self -movement, yields us the specific knowledge 
which distinguishes it radically from the awareness and 
knowledge of all merely sensorially revealed existents, 
existents revealed only by means of specific external 
sensations. This inner self -feeling, this immediate and 
constant bodily awareness, conveyed by inner sensa- 
tions or feelings, is that which stamps it among all 
other bodies, intimately and exclusively our individual 
possession ; and on whose dim but permanent foil 
other transient feelings are more or less bright scinti- 
lations. The central sphere of self -feeling (Korper- 
Fuhlsphdre) has been found to be the most extensive 
and most widely associated special province of the cere- 
bral hemispheres. 

In relation to such internal bodily experience it is 
important to remark that, though our actual aware- 



7 8 Philosophical Survey 

ness forms only the single moment we call the present, 
and though such momentary awareness is centrally 
localized, it carries, nevertheless, with it, even in its 
mere organic composition, the consciousness of time 
and space relations. Our memory or fund of latent 
experience links present direct awareness to remem- 
bered conscious states, and to such as are expected to 
be experienced in the future. Our awareness of con- 
tinuity and duration is due to stimulation and conse- 
quent conscious reverberation of our latent store of 
remembered experience. As regards our organic 
awareness of bodily expanse and form it involves in 
a primitive, yet definitive manner all space dimensions. 
A pain arising at any part of the surface of our body 
is instantly felt localized in space with astonishing 
precision, and this is the case also with our limbs, no 
matter in what position they may happen to be held 
at the time being, independently of being seen or 
touched. The hand, for instance, may be raised above 
the head, stretched out in front or in any other direc- 
tion, and it is felt from within to occupy the definite 
position in space externally corroborated by touch and 
sight. A prick, moreover, on whatever part of it will 
be felt accurately localized in relation to our central- 
ized apperception. All this time and space conscious- 
ness exists quite independently of the tactual and visual 
knowledge and corroboration eventually acquired by 
ourselves, and moreover verified by the touch and 
sight of outsiders. The feeling and apprehension of 
the definitely localized distance and direction of a 
pain or other sensation involves implicitly all spatial 
dimensions, and is evidently as elementary a mode of 
consciousness as the feeling or sensation which it 
accompanies. In fact, sensations are all felt as more or 



The Individual Microcosm 79 

less distinctly localized in implied space ; cutaneous sen- 
sations quite definitely so. These are distinctly felt as 
specialized and accentuated points on the surface of 
the organic awareness of our body, and they occupy 
as such definite positions in this spatial awareness. 
How otherwise could we know where a sensation is 
being felt quite irrespective of tactual and visual explo- 
ration? And how could a pain or other sensation be 
felt localized at a definite spot on what had formerly 
been a limb, now amputated; and felt, moreover, in 
the spatial direction in which the amputated limb is 
delusively believed to be held ? 

These localized sensations are obviously consciously 
realized in what is perceived as the brain. The shift- 
ing of the spatial positions of a surface-sensation along 
with the movement of a limb must evidently be due 
to some change caused by the definite movement, and 
registered through a change in the central organ of 
space-perception. It cannot be exclusively due to sen- 
sations accompanying the movement, not only to sen- 
sations of muscular contraction, and to such as are 
arising during the movement of joints, as Professor 
James tries to prove. He says : 4< We indubitably local- 
ize the finger-tip at the successive points of its path, 
by means of the sensations which we receive from the 
joints." But let an arm be stretched out and made 
comfortably to rest. This performance is no doubt 
accompanied by sensations in the joints of the arm 
while being moved. But let the present position of 
the moved arm be forgotten for a while, the attention 
being otherwise occupied. All sensations that had 
originally accompanied the movement of the arm are 
no longer felt nor remembered. Yet a touch on any 
part of the arm, on the tip of one of its fingers, for 



8o Philosophical Survey 

instance, is immediately felt as definitely localized; 
localized in an entirely different spatial position than 
it occupied before and during the movement of the 
arm. It is admitted that the brain, as organ of con- 
sciousness, is where the touch is actually felt, as defi- 
nitely localized. The change from before to after the 
movement of the centrally felt position could not take 
place if some change in the position-sensing central 
organ had not been brought about concomitantly with 
the changed position of the arm. Surely it is not the 
nerves of the joint that give rise to the definitely local- 
ized feeling of touch on the skin of the motionless finger. 
This feeling is plainly aroused by stimulation of the 
same cutaneous nerves, that in case they had been 
stimulated in a former position would have given rise 
in the central organ to the feeling of that position. It 
follows that, as definite positions of the finger-tip are 
felt irrespective of joint sensation, all varying posi- 
tions during its movement are thus felt. Still the 
joint sensations accompanying the movement are like- 
wise felt definitely localized in the changing positions 
along the path of movement, and they reinforce thus 
the inner awareness of shifting positions during what 
is objectively perceived as movement of the arm and 
its fingers. 

The important fact here is, that the same kind of 
sensation, a prick, for instance, on the same spot, is . 
instantly and positively felt localized in whatever 
definite position in space the pricked spot may be 
objectively perceived to be situated. Consequently, 
the sensation being the same in every felt position, and 
also the stimulated spot on the skin, the immediate 
awareness of their occupying, nevertheless, entirely 
different positions can be due only to a definite change 



The Individual Microcosm 81 

in the central organ of space-consciousness. The inner 
awareness, at all times, of the position our members 
are occupying in space is, therefore, dependent on a 
definite change wrought in the neural structure of the 
central organ of space-consciousness during what is 
objectively perceived as the movement of these mem- 
bers. The central neural structure is here vitally 
mobile, and forms a sensitive medium whose consti- 
tution undergoes changes concomitant with and cor- 
responding to bodily movements, enabling it thereby 
to convey immediate awareness of any assumed posi- 
tion of the members moved. 

Consciously given as further means of knowledge, 
besides organic feelings, are preeminently what are 
called "special" or more particularly "external" sen- 
sations: sensations of touch, taste, smell, sight, and 
hearing. These are specific modes of sensibility found 
to be normally incited by definite modes of external 
stimulation, or, more cautiously expressed, incited by 
some compelling influence not emanating from the 
precipient's own being. Comparative anatomy and 
embryology teach that what we perceive as the ecto- 
derm, or outside layer of the organism, has along its 
surface of contact with the environment been special- 
ized into a system of sensory organs, attuned to special 
modes of stimulation. In the region of the head the 
ectodermic layer has been furthermore differentiated 
and specialized into what are known as preeminently 
the special organs of sense. It is by means of such 
specifically attuned sensibilities that our most distinct 
and varied experience accrues to us; the perceptual 
awareness, namely, of what is called the external world. 
We touch, taste, smell, see, and hear on incitement 
of our sensorial sensibilities, and recognize through 



82 Philosophical Survey 

such reactive modes of sensation, the distinguishing 
characteristics of the inciting influences, being enabled 
thereby to apprehend their practical import to our 
being. 

By sensorial sensibilities of the tactual and visual 
kind the inner organic awareness of our bodily form 
and its belongings becomes manifoldly corroborated 
and richly supplemented. The spatial blending of the 
inner organic and the outer sensorial awareness of our 
body renders the same a conscious possession apart 
from all other bodies. The sight and touch, for exam- 
ple, of what we call our own hand, being blended with 
congruent organic sensations, yields a certainty of per- 
sonal possession not attaching to the sight and touch 
of its most perfect imitation, or to the hand of any 
other person. It is principally on this account that 
the other bodies, equally vividly perceived by touch 
and sight, are immediately apprehended as foreign 
entities. This is the case with all perceptual bodies, 
not felt and apprehended by means of inner or organic 
sensations. They are, in consequence, intuitively 
believed to belong to a world existing outside the per- 
cipient, whose stimulating influences incite in a definite 
way his perceptual awareness. These foreign influ- 
ences intrude into consciousness with inevitable insis- 
tence, and cause the perceptual appearances to move 
and behave within the conscious content in ways of 
their own, felt to be independent of our individual 
volition. And without the least hesitation we believe 
such sensorially presented bodies, with their movements 
and changes to exist independently of our casually 
perceiving them, and we invariably act in accordance 
with this belief. 

Nevertheless, it is quite certain that what we actu- 



The Individual Microcosm 83 

ally perceive as bodily existents consist out and out 
of nothing but the special kinds of conscious states 
called "percepts." They are modes of awareness 
somehow coerced into the form of definite bodily per- 
cepts by influences not exclusively emanating from 
our own being and its latent store of former ex- 
perience. 

The gradually apprehended and memorized gener- 
alities, differences, and similarities of the sensorially 
stimulated modes of awareness, and therewith the 
manifold connections among the stimulating influences 
thus revealed, go to form what may be called the 
objective part of our latent store of experience. This 
consists in an established range of comprehensive 
knowledge evincing itself consciously in an involuted 
system of conceptual representations, in which special 
concepts retain the signification of the common char- 
acteristics belonging to groups of perceptual particu- 
lars, whose similar traits they then representatively 
comprehend. 

Purely subjective experience, such as is formed quite 
independently of external stimulation, and without 
direct reference to it; such wholly subjective informa- 
tion is composed only of those organic sensations that 
make up the inner awareness or uncomplicated self- 
feeling of our organism and its vital activities. It is 
this permanent groundwork of self -feeling that becomes 
casually objectively modified in specific ways by 
externally stimulated modes of sensorial awareness. 

To us human individuals, however, the most impor- 
tant constituents of our conscious microcosm consist 
in the feelings, emotions, and volitions with which 
our being reacts upon external modes of affection in 
apprehension of their significance to our human wel- 



84 Philosophical Survey 

fare. These feelings, emotions, and volitions emanate 
from organically preestablished dispositions and abili- 
ties of our individual being. And their consciously 
experienced actuation forms the most intimately mo- 
mentous part of our conscious life. They refer to what 
we like, desire, and strive for, and to what we dislike, 
eschew, and strive against. Our conscious microcosm, 
with its all-revealing moment of awareness, has in 
extra-conscious latency an inexhaustible fund of sys- 
tematized inner and outer experience to draw upon. 
And the practically simultaneous presence of a wide 
reach of such experience in immediate awareness affords 
us, as direct and premonitary guidance, a microcosmic 
insight into nature and our life therein. 

But where, after all, it must be asked, is to be found 
the extra-conscious matrix that harbors our latent 
experience ? And by what means is it empowered to 
issue and reissue it into actual awareness in inexhaust- 
ible sequence, with life-long reinstatement? Also of 
what nature are the extra-conscious, foreign influences 
that compel and determine the perceptual awareness 
of nature? Upon the epistemological and ontological 
views thinkers are led to adopt regarding these inevi- 
table questions hinges their conviction concerning the 
means and meaning of knowledge, and the nature of 
the reality of which it is the knowledge. In accord- 
ance with such conviction are molded social relations 
and ethical conduct. 



V. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL DILEMMA 

The fact that all awareness, all knowledge, all that 
is directly manifest in nature of things and events, 
consists solely of a variety of conscious states; this 
undeniable fact inclines thinkers, who have recognized 
it, to adopt straightway a purely ideal view of exist- 
ence. For if everything we are actually aware of con- 
sists of such ideal stuff as conscious states are made of, 
what need, then, of any other kind of reality? What 
other kind of merely inferred reality can anyway stand 
its ground against actually and directly manifest con- 
scious or ideal existence? The world as consisting of 
conscious or mental appearances is what is immedi- 
ately, exclusively, and intimately revealed. All trans- 
cendent inference therefrom, all inference regarding the 
transcendent existence of extra-conscious, non-mental, 
non -ideal reality can be only hypothetical and prob- 
lematic, nay, quite superfluous. 

Such, generally, are the considerations that have 
induced even physicists in growing numbers to become 
convinced Idealists. And most philosophers since 
Berkeley have on the strength of the all-revealing, 
all-comprising nature of consciousness professed Ideal- 
ism in some form. But, notwithstanding, it is surely 
an idealistic delusion to believe that nature can really 
and solely consist of the dream-like material we are 
directly conscious of, and which forms the conscious 
content. Even going to the extreme of discarding 

85 



86 Philosophical Survey 

entirely the epistemological problem by ignoring the 
solipsistic exclusiveness of individual consciousness, or 
by boldly assuming that conscious states exist, as such, 
altogether independently of any underlying subject 
or manifesting substance, even on such wholly unten- 
able assumptions nature could not be constructed out 
of mere conscious or ideal phenomena. These are, 
manifestly, one and all in perpetual flux, and are utterly 
forceless and evanescent appearances. The futility 
of every attempt to construct any durable and con- 
sistent world out of such perishable material should 
at once be plainly evident. And it is to be hoped that 
such bootless, delusive occupation may soon be classed 
with perpetuum mobile constructions, and quadrature 
of the circle solutions. 

In truth, no philosophy, not even extreme Phenom- 
enalism, can succeed in evading realistic inferences, 
which transcend essentially what is consciously given. 
Some kind of enduring matrix, wherein past experi- 
ence is abidingly preserved in extra-conscious latency, 
is always tacitly presupposed. For without the mem- 
ory of past experience all coherency, all consistency 
of consciousness, and of the existence it reveals, would 
instantly dissolve into complete oblivion and nonen- 
tity. The tacit postulation of a matrix and emanating 
source of past experience amounts, however, to almost 
entirely begging the question of knowledge. For every- 
thing already acquired, and all original endowment 
of sensibility, percipiency, and apprehension rests evi- 
dently somehow potentially preexistent beyond the 
transient conscious appearances, ready on occasion to 
arise and to furnish the material and consistency of 
actual -awareness. Clearly, a theory of knowledge is 
here indispensable to make sure of the existence and 



The Epistemological Dilemma 87 

nature of the extra-conscious matrix wherein all experi- 
ence becomes latently preserved and systematized as 
ready-made knowledge, and whence it issues into 
apprehending awareness. 

Idealistic world-constructions, though acknowledg- 
ing only the real existence of mental or ideal modes, 
are forced to assume more or less openly some perma- 
nent, active principle that systematically elaborates 
and steadfastly underlies the random, forceless material 
which casually intrudes into awareness, and that appre- 
hends it as consistent knowledge. To this assumed 
actuating, systematizing, and apprehending agency 
various names are given, such as soul, mind, ego, 
reason, intelligence, will, apperception, attention, habit, 
association, necessary connection; in fine, some postu- 
lated, power-endowed entity has here to be conceived 
as the efficient principle of synthetizing and appre- 
hending cognition, in order that significant experience 
may be derived from the experiential confusion that 
attaches to what randomly and fractionally appears 
in time and space. 

Now as Idealism can nowise dispense with realistic 
postulations of an extra-conscious nature, it devolves 
upon it to prove, what it has never yet succeeded in 
doing, that its assumption of the idealistic nature of 
the postulated efficient principle is truly valid ; to prove 
that what we experience as conscious or mental states 
are, as such, latently contained, and that they issue 
into awareness, by force of the substantiality and activ- 
ity of an agent which is itself of the same ideal nature 
as our conscious or mental experience; or, at least, of 
the nature of some constituent of it. For, undeniably, 
we know actually and positively no other kind of ideal 
or mental existence save that of the sundry modes of 



88 Philosophical Survey- 

awareness that constitute our individual conscious 
content. 

What positive proof, then, can be brought forward, 
that some enduring, force-endowed, extra -conscious 
agent of a nature essentially identical with what we 
experience as manifestations of our conscious aware- 
ness ; that such an ideal agent is in verity underlying, 
systematizing, actuating, and apprehending the force- 
less and evanescent play of conscious phenomena ? 

It is of the essence of Idealism to deny outright the 
existence of extra-conscious physical existents believed 
by common sense to compose what is called the exter- 
nal world. In its nominalistic mood it attributes per- 
manency and efficiency to the sensorial elements of 
awareness, and seeks to construct by combinations of 
these ephemeral sensations the entire world of con- 
sciousness, declaring it to be the real world. Such 
fanciful handling of transitory elements of awareness 
results, at most, as with Berkeley, in self -rounded per- 
cepts, themselves mere transitory phenomena, never- 
theless considered by him to be identical with real 
existence. 

In its transcendental mood Idealism attributes per- 
manency and efficiency to what it calls " thought," 
"reason," or " intelligence," meaning thereby a trans- 
phenomenal agent that creatively constitutes and 
knowingly apprehends an eternal system of ideas, in 
which all true reality is believed to consist. And such 
thought, reason, or intelligence is thus held to be 
identical with universal Being. 

As already stated, Idealism of the sensorial or nomi- 
nalistic kind necessarily presupposes beyond actual 
consciousness some preserving, memorizing, and issu- 
ing matrix of past experience, and a synthetizing power 



The Epistemological Dilemma 89 

which binds present and past experience into coherent 
knowledge. Of these most essential sustaining, actu- 
ating, and apprehending agencies it takes, however, 
no adequate epistemological account, giving them 
merely arbitrary names without proof or demonstra- 
tion of the real existence of that which the name implies. 
Idealism of the intellectual or transcendental kind has, 
in its turn, for the sake of existential continuity and 
permanency, been led fictitiously to postulate an eter- 
nal, full-formed system of thought or totality of Being, 
of which individual knowledge is then declared to be 
only a more or less adequate re-cognition. 

The knowledge of nominalistic or sensorial Idealism 
refers to nothing real in existence beyond the phenom- 
enal play of individual consciousness, and with it its 
world vanishes from moment to moment into the 
unsubstantial void of pure Nihilism. The knowledge 
of transcendental or intellectual Idealism, on the 
other hand, never succeeds in assimilating or in emanat- 
ing sensorial and perceptual awareness, failing thus to 
include and to recognize the essential significance of 
our most vivid, distinct, varied, and practically impor- 
tant experience. In measure as the conceptual thought 
of intellectual Idealism is made to serve in the inter- 
pretation of experience as an entity comprehending in 
its concentrating inclusiveness a more and more com- 
plete range of knowledge, but knowledge purified of 
its sensorial significance ; in measure as it accomplishes 
this it then conceptually reveals not an intelligible 
world of complete and perfect being, but a Nihilism 
even more devoid of reality than that of sensorial 
Idealism. Pure thought, despoiled of sense -revealed 
material, has irretrievably lost all content and signifi- 
cance, as Kant recognized, and despite all that 



9o Philosophical Survey 

post-Kantian Idealism has asserted to the con- 
trary. 

Conscious and rational comprehension of experience 
with its transcendence of time and space -limitations 
is only to be found in the all-revealing conscious 
content of our moment of actual awareness, which, 
being itself a mere transient phenomenon, must be 
wholly dependent for its subsistence on a permanent 
matrix of latently systematized and memorized knowl- 
edge. The task is to demonstrate the real existence of 
such a matrix. As, to conceptual thought, believed to 
be itself such a matrix, its function is to be representa- 
tive of generalities, similarities, and differences obtain- 
ing between facts of outer and inner experience. 
You divest it of its reference to these positive mani- 
festations in time and space, and it has therewith 
dropped its entire cognitive significance. All modes of 
cognition have exclusive reference to such experience 
as has accrued in time and space manifestations. A 
mere sensation may be thus already a cognitive fact 
of extensive subjective and objective significance. 
The awareness of a specific odor, for instance, a mere 
olfactory sensation, can involve as subjective sign the 
apprehension of near satisfaction in a definite manner 
of an organic need such as hunger. And as an objective 
sign it may involve at the same time recognition of the 
existence and near presence of a specific, extra-con- 
scious object which will satisfy the organic need. The 
mere sensation serves here as a sign for an entire 
complex of inner and outer knowledge derived in the 
past and to be applied to what is to happen in the 
future. 

Even so elementary a cognitive fact as here men- 
tioned opens in an unsophisticated way the entire 



The Epistemological Dilemma 91 

epistemological problem. The specific sensation which 
serves here as a cognitive sign, signifying in internal 
experience the prospect of a definite mode of satis- 
faction of an organic need, implies the epistemological 
question of the seat of the sensation and its cognitive 
implications, the seat also of the organic need to be 
satisfied. And the same cognitive sign signifies in 
external experience a definite object of satisfaction, 
involving the epistemological question as to where 
this object has its real being, and in what its hunger- 
satisfying efficiency really consists. These are the 
genuine epistemological questions; the questions of 
the true import of knowledge involved in the experi- 
ential significance of conscious signs. 

Now T can pure Idealism in the remotest degree 
account for this fundamental and indubitable state of 
things? Can the organic need, which surely has to be 
allowed to be an urgent existential fact, can it be 
resolved into mere conceptual existence, or into 
nothing but its immediate conscious signs? And the 
object which is to serve as the hunger-satisfying exis- 
tent, signalized by a mere sensation, and present as a 
mere percept, can it itself consist of this same percept ? 
Can the organic need, the tremendously powerful 
vital craving of hunger, be appeased by the mere 
presentation of an ideal phenomenon, such as a 
percept assuredly is? Can any ideal or perceptual 
piece of bread, consisting of nothing but visual and 
tactual sensation, satisfy the craving of hunger, of 
whose reality as an organic need no sane person can 
doubt? 

Such simple practical consideration, boldly faced by 
Berkeley, who felt logically compelled to assert the 
hunger-satisfying efficiency of his nevertheless "force- 



9 2 Philosophical Survey 

less" perceptual " victuals"; such commonplace re- 
marks are none too trivial to put to the rout pure 
Idealism of the loftiest kind. For the most exalted 
inner experience accrues to us likewise as the intellect- 
ualized conscious manifestation of organized needs and 
tendencies, such as the craving or desire for truth, for 
goodness, for beauty. And the satisfaction of these 
higher needs is likewise to be found in existents of the 
extra -conscious world, of which sensations, percepts, 
and thoughts are the cognitive signals. Percepts and 
thoughts, however beautiful and sublime as directly 
apprehended, are always aroused by, and are always 
significative of influences emanating from the extra - 
conscious existents that compose the real, trans- 
phenomenal macrocosm, of which our own being 
forms an integrant part. You annihilate this being's 
organic needs, which constitute its conative propensities 
or impulsions; and you annihilate, furthermore, its 
fund of latent experience, that constitutes its cognitive 
wealth, and what import would be left to cognitive 
signs in direct awareness? What would, then, a sen- 
sation, a percept, a thought, a word, signify beyond its 
own appearance? They would obviously have lost 
their entire cognitive significance. And, on the other 
hand, you annihilate the source of sense-compelling 
influences, and with it all externally awakened cogni- 
tive signs, all actual and remembered sensations and 
perceptions, and the consequence would be that no 
organic need of any kind, no conative striving could 
find the least satisfaction. 

These preliminary epistemological remarks amount 
here, however, only to intuitive assertions which, con- 
vincing as they may be to common sense, have to await 
more explicit, and positive grounding before they can 



The Epistemological Dilemma 93 

have their validity scientifically established. For, 
undeniably, the assumption of any kind of existence 
beyond that immediately present as content of the 
moment of actual awareness is a mere inference, how- 
ever insistent, which a sound epistemology has existen- 
tially to justify. 

If the efforts of pure Idealism to transcend the phe- 
nomenal play of the individual's conscious content 
prove futile on critical examination, Materialism, on 
the other hand, loses at once its raison d'etre from the 
simple fact that what it takes to be real, extra-conscious 
bodies are in truth only sense-woven percepts. No 
wonder, then, that such perceptual bodies, which are 
themselves only phenomenal constituents of the trans- 
itory conscious content, have no power to produce or 
to transform themselves into other constituents of 
consciousness, an assumption nevertheless implied in 
current physical explanations. The visual percept , 
for instance, called air vibration, how can it be the 
real stimulating agent of the auditory sensation called 
"sound"? A complex of visual sensations, which 
consciously constitutes air vibrations, can nowise in- 
fluence a complex of auditory sensations. Both sen- 
sorial complexes are obviously constituents of one and 
the same forceless conscious content aroused by dif- 
ferent modes of the same stimulating influence, and 
have as such not the least power of affecting each other. 

It is only when the perceptual brain is wrongly taken 
to be something self-existing; namely, a functioning 
bodily existent outside consciousness; it is only then 
that there arises the insoluble, perennial puzzle, how 
such function of a material body can possibly produce, 
emanate, or transform itself into a conscious state. 
The central riddle of the Cartesians, of the physiologists, 



94 Philosophical Survey 

the psycho-physicists ; in fact, of all who believe in the 
dualism of "mind" and "matter"; the ancient stand- 
ing riddle how body can possibly act on mind and mind 
on body, or how motion can produce sensation or 
sensation motion; this provokingly unyielding riddle 
finds its ready solution in the recognition that there 
exists no such thing as the matter and motion here 
postulated beyond consciousness; that both the sup- 
posed moving matter and the supposed feeling mind 
are alike groups of conscious phenomena which as 
such can nowise influence one another. 

A conscious or ideal sign, say a certain sound, can 
nowise act upon a percept, say a perceptual dog. You 
cannot effectively whistle to an ideal dog you remem- 
ber, or to a perceptual dog actually forming part of 
your conscious content and of that of any bystander. 
Nor is the sound heard by the real dog at all heard by 
the perceptual dog forming part of your conscious 
content; and the movements of the perceptual dog 
within your conscious content are no more the move- 
ments of the real dog than those perceived in a mirror. 

Perceptual bodies, made up altogether of forceless 
conscious states, are clearly powerless to act upon other 
conscious states. The extended group of percepts 
which compose what we are visually and tactually 
aware of as our body, and the unextended group of 
conscious states which make up what is considered to 
be our mind; this entire complex of conscious states 
goes to form the conscious content of our moment of 
actual awareness, which is itself significative of the 
vast fund of gathered experience that rests latently 
and potentially organized in some extra-conscious 
matrix. 

Materialism misconceives, no less than Idealism, the 



The Epistemological Dilemma 95 

real epistemological problem, and misinterprets there- 
with the true import of knowledge. The pending 
question in this connection, as generally conceived, 
is : What are the actual conditions that determine the 
striking difference obtaining between perceptual and 
conceptual awareness? This is the difference which 
has persistently led on the one side to Materialism, 
and on the other side to transcendental Idealism. 
Perceptual awareness seems to picture externally in 
time and space a world of bodily existents subsisting 
permanently beyond our senses and r independent of 
being perceived. Conceptual awareness, on the con- 
trary, seems to recognize inwardly a timeless and 
spaceless world of purely ideal subsistence. We have 
here an epistemological dilemma that has sorely per- 
plexed ancient and modern thinkers. It gives rise to 
sundry momentous questions. How does past experi- 
ence, evincing itself in comprehensive conceptual 
thought, come to be latently systematized and pre- 
served? By what means does it then issue signifi- 
cantly into actual awareness ? Of what kind of existents 
are externally compelled perceptual appearances re- 
presentative signs of? And what do the two seem- 
ingly disparate modes of cognition, perception, and 
conception respectively signify to us human beings? 

The constituents of our conscious content, our sole 
source of revelation seem as perceptual phenomena 
to point towards a universe of permanent, power- 
endowed existents subsisting beyond sensorial aware- 
ness. As conceptual phenomena they seem to point 
towards an extra-conscious matrix, wherein actual 
experience finds a retentive reception, and wherein 
past experience is systematically gathered and pre- 
served, despite its having been merely casually, frag- 



96 Philosophical Survey 

mentarily, and cursorily apprehended within actual 
awareness. These are transphenomenal, naturalistic 
implications intuitively inferred in contemplating the 
conscious content, which, however, might possibly be 
delusive, and have, therefore, to be scientifically veri- 
fied by means of a valid theory of knowledge. Trans- 
cendental Idealism maintains, in fact, in opposition to 
them, that all cognition of what appears in time and 
space is only inadequate re-cognition of a supernatu- 
ral, all-comprising content of timeless and spaceless 
reality. 

To settle decisively this all-important contention 
pending between Naturalism and Idealism is the urgent 
task of a sound epistemology, in order that philosoph- 
ical thought in its interpretation of nature may legiti- 
mately transcend the mere phenomenal world of 
individual consciousness, and arrive at truly signifi- 
cant knowledge concerning the universe and our life 
therein. 



VI. THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 

It is undeniable that the group of conscious states, 
organic, sensorial, and perceptual, which constitutes 
the direct awareness of what we call our body; that 
this direct bodily awareness consists of nothing but 
forceless, evanescent mental or ideal phenomena. We 
shut our eyes and the visual percept we call our body 
vanishes out of consciousness. We avoid encounter- 
ing the definitely localized specific sensations of touch 
and resistance, which we likewise call our body, and 
this tactual body is also no more. We refrain from 
actuating sets of muscles, and what we call the differ- 
ent parts of our body, which by means of movement 
would have become clearly conscious as definitely local- 
ized, are now consciously non-existent, save vaguely 
as organic feelings and contact sensations. We go to 
sleep, undoubtedly a real occurrence in life not to be 
argued away, and the entire complex of diverse con- 
scious states, which constitutes all we are aware of as 
our body, is then completely wiped out of existence. 

This being quite evidently so, the all-important ques- 
tion arises here : whether this purely ideal body of ours, 
composed of nothing but diverse sets of casually emerg- 
ing and vanishing conscious states, and being obvi- 
ously the only body we are actually aware of as belong- 
ing to our own being; whether it is, as such, our real 
body, or veritable living organism; or whether, on the 
other hand, all these different conscious states, of which 
it is made up in actual awareness, are merely phenom- 

97 



98 Philosophical Survey 

enal signs, signalizing in various ways the real pres- 
ence and the real characteristics of a relatively perma- 
nent, extra-conscious existent? 

This, surely, is the gist of the genuine epistemological 
question, so far as it concents the real substantial 
existence of our body. Idealism is forced to maintain, 
either, that the sensorial and perceptual body, the only 
body we arc etually aware of. is altogether an illusion 
of sense ; or that we have really no other body save that 
constituted by conscious states; by mere sensations 
and percepts, as nominalistie Idealism is bold to assert, 
or that it is a purely thought-woven phenomenon, as 
is the settled persuasion of conceptual Idealism. And 
in order to account for the permanency of such an 
i Leally constituted body during its absence in conscious 
awareness. Idealism has at times recourse to the same 
)sterous device which Leibnitz made use of for 
a similar purpose : recourse, namely, to the assumption 
of unconscious conscious states. For as regards the 
monads of Leibnitz, pure ideal beings such as Idealism 
believes us all to be, without their existence being 
hypothetically grounded in an enduring plenum of 
unconscious being, they, and we ourselves, would con- 
sist of nothing but a succession of conscious phenomena 
arising out of vacancy. To impart to such purely ideal 
monadic beings enduring subsistence, and an inex- 
haustible source of potential modes of consciousness, 
Leibnitz endowed them with a permanent fund of 
unconscious perceptions. But. surely, perceptions 
. are not conscious are clearly non-existent as such. 
And, besides, how can a being believed to consist of 
nothing but ideal activity, nevertheless contain in 
latency a permanent, world-comprising content? 

Conscious states can. of course, not issue out of 



The Epistemological Standpoint 99 

nothingness. They must arise from a permanent, 
extra -conscious matrix. But just because the perma- 
nent matrix is evidently abiding in extra-conscious 
latency, it cannot be itself of conscious or ideal con- 
sistency; it cannot be comoosed of perceptions that 
are not perceived, or of mental phenomena of any kind 
that are of conscious consistency, but not consciously 
manifest. Virtually the same device for saving the 
permanency of the idealistically conceived body during 
its absence in conscious awareness, is its transference 
as a continued existent to the conscious content of 
an hypostasized universal consciousness. But here 
again all conscious activity of a universal intelligence 
can consist only of a succession of transitory conscious 
states. Such an intelligence must, therefore, no less 
than the monads of Leibnitz, have as sustaining source 
of its successive conscious states, an emanating extra- 
conscious matrix. And this leads consistently to the 
unconscious One or Absolute of Neo-Platonism, or to 
the likewise unconscious "Ungrund" of Schelling. 
AVhere, then, in these ineffable profundities of being 
is our idealistically conceived body to be found ? 

As regards the Absolute in the Spinozistic sense, it 
consistently leads to the Eleatic position. For it is of 
the essence of its being to be changeless, or not in- 
volved in the flux of time. Under this view, if our 
body is not held to be altogether an illusion of sense, 
it can at most be a changeless limiting mode of the 
Absolute's infinite attribute of extension. And if 
consciousness be at all allowed to the absolute, it 
could only consist of an eternal moment of all-com- 
prising, changeless awareness, or an ever sustained 
nunc stans of conscious All-Being, which is the unten- 
able Eleatic position over again. 

LOFC. 



ioo Philosophical Survey 

In outright opposition of every kind of pure Idealism 
epistemological Naturalism, and with it common sense, 
believe emphatically in the real existence of a vitally 
organized bodily entity subsisting beyond conscious- 
ness, existentially independent of what is casually 
perceived or conceived, as the group of bodily percepts 
which at times forms part of our conscious content 
and of that of bystanders. It devolves upon Natur- 
alism to prove, or clearly to demonstrate, that such an 
extra-conscious, relatively permanent entity is in 
fact signalized by the complex of fleeting conscious 
phenomena we call our body. Can we, then, epistemo- 
logically corroborate the common-sense conviction that 
what is perceived as our body, and with it what is per- 
ceived as the entire world figured before our senses; 
that this perceptual awareness is really signalizing a 
realm of Being existing independently of being thus 
perceived or conceived? 

It cannot be denied that all accurate knowledge we 
now possess of what we call our body has been labo- 
riously acquired by means of scientific research, and 
nowise by mere philosophical contemplation or specu- 
lation. The vast array of biological facts, verifiable 
at all times by whatever competent investigator, has 
been collected by' a host of close observers of sense- 
compelled percepts, and has not been excogitated by 
single philosophers from an ideal totality of Being 
conceptually hypostasized. The biological knowledge 
of our body is based on perceptual facts scrupulously 
ascertained by means of visual and tactual awareness, 
and not on thoughts intrinsically evolved or deduced 
from the nature of an assumed Absolute. 

In this connection it is instructive to be reminded 
of what leading philosophers of modern times have, 



The Epistemological Standpoint 101 

as systematic thinkers, been logically constrained to 
teach regarding the constitution of our body. Des- 
cartes, as philosopher, believed it to be a complex 
geometrical figure, a mere special mode of his extended 
substance. Spinoza held it to be the extended aspect 
of a special unitary mode of combined thought and 
extension, these being the two particular attributes of 
the absolute substance which compose our world. 
Leibnitz taught that the body is composed of an 
aggregate (!) of inferior unextended (!) monads sur- 
rounding the central monad held to be exclusively the 
being, of which the outside monads form the body. 
Locke taught that the body is made up of what he 
called the primary qualities of things: extension, 
density, and movable form. Berkeley, that it is a 
percept flashed into awareness by the volitional fiat 
of the Deity. Hume, and with him all consistent 
Sensationalists and Associationists, that it consists of 
a conglomerate of vivid impressions and their remem- 
bered ideas. Kant, that it is a synthetic product of 
the understanding elaborated from sensorial appear- 
ances. Fichte, that it is the outcome of an uncon- 
scious act of the productive imagination consciously 
apprehended by the rational activity of which he 
believed the World -creating Ego to consist. Schelling 
in his system of Absolute Identity intuites the body 
to be a definite expression or potency of the objective 
or nature-pole of absolute Reason. Hegel that it forms 
part of the inadequate phenomenon of Reason, called 
nature. Herbart held it to be an apprehended specific 
mode of self-conserving reaction on the part of the 
monadic soul; a mode aroused by the disturbing 
influence of a definite constellation of the surrounding 
monadic " reals " or simple substances. Mill, that it is a 



102 Philosophical Survey 

special group of possibilities of sensation. Lotze, that 
it consists of a multiplicity of real, hypersensible, 
unextended beings that display spatial force-mani- 
festations in relation to other such beings. 

In all this astounding miscellany of body-estranging 
conceptions, excogitated by foremost thinkers, common 
sense and natural science can nowise recognize what we 
minutely and intimately have learned to know as our 
body or organism, and as that of other living beings. 

Yet who can follow the profound and subtile reason- 
ing of these master-minds without having to admit 
the all but compelling force of their conclusions. 
These, however, are arrived at by the interpretation of 
thought and being, spirit and nature, mind and body, 
from speculative postulates or from inadequate experi- 
ential data, and without the indispensable aid of a 
sound epistemology. 

The existence of enduring entities, believed by 
common sense to give rise to the casual awareness of 
our own and other bodies, seems to be strongly corro- 
borated by the fact that entirely different sets of 
conscious states point each in its own way to such 
existence. The manifold organic sensations that make 
up the inward awareness of our body are supple- 
mented by entirely different and diverse modes of 
vivid and definite sensorial awareness, tactual, visual, 
thermal, and so on. Moreover, the independent 
existence of such entity seemingly subsisting irre- 
spective of the perceptual body casually and fraction- 
ally arising within our conscious content ; the existence 
of such an extra-conscious existent is rendered all but 
certain by exact copies of our own perceptual body 
being at one and the same time forcibly aroused, with 
all its sensorial characteristics, as the percept of ever 



The Epistemological Standpoint 103 

so many percipients. Surely the rational explanation 
of such multifold and most specific coincidences of 
awareness in ourselves and in a number of other 
percipients, is clearly, that one and the same extra- 
conscious, sense-compelling existent is arousing a 
specific perceptual and representative awareness in 
the different percipients. 

Still, dispite all this ample and convincing evidence, 
it remains open to deny altogether the extra-conscious 
existence of other percipient beings ; for such existence is, 
in fact, inferred solely from our own perceptual awareness 
of bodies and their motions, which we instinctively or 
intuitively believe to belong to other beings. Pure 
Idealism, however, emphatically denies the existence 
of such extra -conscious, sense-revealed beings. Such 
denial leaves nothing present in the world, save one 
single conscious content, whose including moment of 
awareness would, then, be itself the One-and-All. This, 
indeed, is the solipsistic position, from which pure Ideal- 
ism cannot consistently escape. For, on the one hand, 
the individual's perceptual awareness signifies to such 
Idealism nothing beyond itself; and his conceptual 
awareness, on the other hand, reveals nothing con- 
cerning the assumed intelligible or noumenal world. 
It is clear, then, that in pure Idealism the perceiving 
and thinking individual remains as completely shut up 
within himself as is avowedly the case with the monads 
of Leibnitz ; nay, pure Idealism, which can consistently 
admit no existence but the conscious content itself, is 
nowise justified in assuming the existence of any kind of 
perceiving and thinking subject. Consequently, Leib- 
nitz made his monads consist of pure mental activity, 
inconsistently endowing them, nevertheless, with un- 
limited potentiality of predetermined thought. 



104 Philosophical Survey 

As taught by actual experience, there is no other 
way of gaining knowledge of the existence of other 
beings except by means of perceptual awareness. And 
if such transcendent significance of perceptual aware- 
ness is denied, then this denial carries with it that of 
the existence of other beings in to to. This, indeed, 
is the consistent outcome of pure Idealism. The 
straits to which it finds itself reduced in its attempt 
to penetrate beyond the phenomenal appearances of 
individual consciousness into the realm of permanent, 
transphenomenal reality, urges it to fancifully deify the 
solipsistic consciousness , Individual consciousness, the 
only consciousness we have any direct knowledge of, 
is then speculatively transferred to a transphenomenal 
sphere, and there expanded into universal conscious- 
ness. Such fanciful, inadmissable transsubstantia- 
tion of individual consciousness cannot be rendered 
acceptable by the interposition of a plurality of 
ideal beings or monads between the actual solipsistic 
and the assumed universal consciousness. A single 
monad of Leibnitz, preeminently his own central 
monad, constitutes virtually the One-and-All. For, 
as Leibnitz himself maintains, if all other monads but 
one were annihilated, this one remaining monad would 
contain within itself the whole infinity of existence. 
A monad is conceived as consisting of successive 
moments of more or less distinct awareness, arising with 
fatalistic necessity, uninfluenced by anything external 
to itself. Now such a solipsistic monad, which rigor- 
ously excludes all outside influences, cannot possibly 
be aware of the existence of other beings. It is, there- 
fore, an altogether arbitrary assumption on the part 
of the central monad of Leibnitz, or of any exclu- 
sively solipsistic consciousness, to posit outside of itself 



The Epistemological Standpoint 105 

a plurality of other monads. The futility of attempt- 
ing to construct the universe out of purely ideal, 
unextended beings is strikingly exemplified in the 
Monadology of the great Leibnitz, and also in that of 
Herbart and his followers. The idealistic Pluralists 
vainly labor to construct bodies, which are extended 
things, out of monadistic beings, which are unextended 
phantoms ; and vainly, above all, to derive a plurality 
of separate beings from the exclusively intrinsic mani- 
festations of a 'unitary individual consciousness. The 
aggregation of ever so many unextended beings can 
never constitute the least extended thing, or even the 
least extended percept. Nor can the solipsistic aware- 
ness of a simple unextended, indivisible unit perceive a 
multiplicity of other units. A central monad cannot 
possibly have an extended body, as Leibnitz never- 
theless maintains, and one consisting of a vast number 
of unextended inferior monads. And if it really had 
such a body miraculously extended and miraculously 
attached to it, it could neither be in the least influenced 
by it, nor indeed ever become aware of it. 

A monad, by dint of its unlimited endowment of 
potential or implicit consciousness, which by neces- 
sitated explicit evolution will ultimately be rendered 
identical with universal consciousness, — such a monad 
is really the Absolute in an unconscious state. And 
here we reach again the world-view of Plotinus, Boehme, 
and Schelling; in fact that of all thinkers who posit a 
something which implicitly contains all modes of being 
and becoming. Transcendental Idealism stands for 
the progressive revelation of preexisting perfection ; 
Naturalism for the laboriously progressive new-creation 
of higher and higher forms of being. 

It is the essential task of epistemology, a task not 



106 Philosophical Survey 

to be evaded, to show how individual consciousness 
can be legitimately transcended; and, therewith, how 
to become rightfully convinced of the existence of other 
beings on the strength of data yielded by the solipsistic 
conscious content. This, in fact, is the crucial test of 
a correct epistemology, which no system of pure Ideal- 
ism has ever been able to come up to. And here, under 
the existence of other beings, is included not only that 
of human and other natural beings, the philosophers 
among the rest; but also that of the absolute Being 
or the universal Intelligence of philosophical systems. 
The real permanent existence of the latter is specu- 
latively posited, either as an innate revelation of con- 
ceptual awareness, or as a necessary inference from 
perceptual awareness; either by force of ontological 
intuition, or by that of cosmological and teleological 
arguments. The alleged justification of the ontolog- 
ical assumption, an assumption virtually underlying 
also cosmological and teleological views, was conclu- 
sively shown by Kant to be invalid. Restrained by 
his scrupulous intellectual integrity he failed to find 
the ens realissimum and perfectissimum given in 
the conceptions and perceptions of the conscious con- 
tent. For the mere conception of a transcendent 
entity, the mere conception here of a supreme trans- 
cendent being, nowise includes or insures its real 
existence. 

The expansion and substantializing of the phenom- 
enal and fractionally transient conscious content of 
the individual thinker into an eternal, all-comprising 
possession of a perfect universal Being, is surely the 
outcome of an exorbitantly bold flight of productive 
imagination, unsupported by any epistemological justi- 
fication. Epistemological restraints are here com- 



The Epistemological Standpoint 107 

pletely ignored or openly discarded as irrelevant. 
Schelling, who had pondered Kant's theory of knowl- 
edge, and who keenly felt the rational impulse to trans- 
cend the solipsistic position of Fichte, confessed that 
this could not be effected by the ordinary modes of 
thinking, but only in the manner of Plotinus, by " intel- 
lectual intuition" and ''the innate longing that senses 
the One"; consequently, by faculties with which we 
have to imagine ourselves specially endowed for the 
purpose of miraculously transubstantializing data of 
our transient consciousness into universal reality. 
Ultimately Schelling arrived quite consistently at the 
final goal of the Neo-Platonic way of thinking. For 
Being, consisting with him in nothing but the act of 
thinking, cannot possibly be itself the all-comprising 
Absolute. Its thoughts, consecutively arising in the 
act of thinking, cannot arise out of Nothingness. They 
must therefore be implicitly contained in an uncon- 
scious matrix, in which they are simultaneously brood- 
ing in undifferentiated latency. And it is this implicit 
content of the Absolute which becomes then explicitly 
revealed to consciousness as the manifold modes of 
nature and spirit. From the biological standpoint it 
may be incidentally remarked, that the ontogenetic 
evolution of body and mind from a unitary unconscious 
germ serves as actually given prototype for the "intel- 
lectual intuition" of such transcendent speculations. 
Such intellectual intuition is mostly unconsciously 
grounded in facts of vitality and organization. 

No doubt Schelling is right when he maintains that 
the entire potential or implicit content of knowledge, 
which becomes consecutively conscious to us, must 
dwell simultaneously and systematically secured in 
unconscious latency. But where is this permanent, 



108 Philosophical Survey 

all-comprising matrix of conscious experience really 
to be found? And when found it will, after all, turn 
out to be only the matrix or "Ungrund" of our own 
individual awareness, and not that of a universal con- 
sciousness. 

Surely, a less fanciful and more scientific way of 
escape from pure Solipsism than that of Transcen- 
dental Idealism has to be discovered. Idealistic think- 
ing debars itself from reaching self -transcendent reality 
on the perceptual side. The cosmological and teleo- 
logical arguments, the most weighty and insistent 
considerations concerning the self-transcendency of 
individual consciousness, can have no meaning for a 
pure Idealist. For he cannot consistently admit that his 
perceptual awareness of the world signalizes anything 
beyond itself, that his percepts are revealing the exist- 
ence and characteristics of a transphenomenal cosmos. 
This impotence of pure Idealism to reach transcend- 
ent existence on the perceptual side implies, as already 
stated, the denial of the self -existence of other human 
beings. For it is undeniable that the awareness of 
what we call other human beings accrues to us solely 
as a sense-derived perceptual appearance, as something 
seen, heard, and felt. Consequently, if these percep- 
tual appearances do not directly and truly reveal the 
presence of beings having their real existence outside 
the percipient's own awareness, then the common- 
sense inference that such beings really exist can be 
but a delusion of the solipsistic consciousness. It has, 
indeed, ever been a cardinal tenet of pure Idealism 
that the sense-revealed world, as something externally 
and independently subsisting, is an illusive phantas- 
magoria. The solipsistic thinker, being himself in his 
idealistic view a purely ideal being, can no more trans- 



The Epistemological Standpoint 109 

cend his own consciousness than one of the monads of 
Leibnitz. It was essentially this very consideration 
which led Kant in his antecritical period to agree with 
Malebranche. In his despair of reaching the trans- 
phenomenal reality of things on the perceptual side, 
he assented to the mystical dictum of the philosophiz- 
ing theologian, that we see everything in God. After 
his vain effort to reconcile the diverse functions of 
reason and sense, he rather reluctantly exclaims: 
" Xempe nos omnia intueri in Deo." 

After having now sufficiently shown that pure 
Idealism cannot consistently admit the independent 
self -existence of other human beings; nor, indeed, of 
any individual subject of the solipsistic consciousness, 
it is superfluous to expose in detail the sundry devices 
used to escape the glaring absurdity that must adhere 
to a system of thought which involves so monstrous 
an outcome. 

There can obtain no greater contrast of existence 
than that actually found between the fleeting phenom- 
ena that constitute our all-revealing conscious con- 
tent, and the permanent, all-comprising, extra-conscious 
matrix, whence issues into actual awareness in un- 
broken sequence the panoramic revelation of nature, 
conveyed in ever-changing kaleidoscopic combinations 
of sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, cravings, 
and emotions. Such a matrix must be in all veritv a 
genuine substance, possessing the essential properties 
with which advanced philosophical thinking lias been 
led to endow the inevitable notion of substantiality; 
a notion that alone rescues our world interpretation 
from complete collapse into the abyss of idealistic 
Nihilism. 

Within the substantial matrix < >f the conscious 



no Philosophical Survey 

content must be latently and implicitly comprised the 
entire system of knowledge that becomes explicitly 
revealed in the medium of transient conscious phenom- 
ena. And as these are reissued over and over again 
in definite combinations, and are recognized as past 
experience, their source must, despite continual con- 
scious outflow and expenditure of its implicit con- 
tent, nevertheless, retain its identical totality of being 
unimpaired. And this abiding identity amid inex- 
haustible change and expenditure constitutes the supreme 
unsolved riddle of the philosophical interpretation of 
nature. 

From the abstract notion of Substance, identity 
amid change can nowise be logically deduced. It is 
logically unintelligible why and how a permanent 
totality of Being comes explicitly and consciously to 
reveal its latent, implicit, extra -conscious content. 
And it is still less logically intelligible, how despite 
such constant expenditure it preserves its own identity 
intact. Other experientially implied properties of the 
matrix of consciousness can likewise not be logically 
deduced. As the latent storehouse of gathered 
experience the permanent matrix has to appropriate, 
from the fleeting conscious phenomena in lapsing and 
obliterating time, abiding traces of their presence and 
characteristics, in order to constitute the latent 
system of potential knowledge known as memory. 
This is clearly a creative process taking place in extra- 
conscious existence, which can be accounted for by no 
logical evolution. 

Transcendental Idealism has in none of its attempts 
succeeded in demonstrating the real existence and 
necessary endowments of the matrix of consciousness. 
This can be accomplished only by aid of a naturalistic 



The Epistemological Standpoint in 

epistemology. Ignoring altogether the paramount 
importance of perceptual awareness, the attitude of 
transcendental Idealism towards Naturalism has con- 
sisted simply in pointing out the logical flaws in the 
working theories of investigators, who with unbiased 
zeal are studying the positive, sense-revealed facts of 
creative nature. By such criticism of the mere inter- 
pretation of what is actually revealed, conceptual 
thinkers seek to negate and push aside the funda- 
mental importance and transphenomenal reality of 
that which makes itself perceptually known with 
preeminent vividness and minuteness. Such intro- 
spective Idealists, emboldened by their critical exploits, 
feel competent to declare perceptual awareness to be 
a mere shadowy, illusive apparition darkening spiritual 
insight. Yet all ideal visions of the ''productive 
imagination" borrow their content solely from what 
is actually experienced in direct awareness, among 
whose conceptual ideas the Idealist can find neither 
his own being nor that of other existents. In its 
eagerness to make direct philosophical connection with 
a preconceived sphere of purely ideal or spiritual 
subsistence, transcendental Idealism turns shortsight- 
edly away from Naturalism, the only true avenue 
towards transphenomenal existence. It fantastically 
luxuriates in the belief that with its logical formulas 
and dialectic maneuvers, utterly sterile if not fertilized 
by actual experience, it can conceptually evolve 
reality and effectively dispel perceptually revealed 
existence What other revelation of the ceaseless 
formative workings of universal creation do we possess 
save that which reaches us, however inadequately, 
through our sensibilities, and which is then assimilated 
and transformed into permanent and systematized 



ii2 Philosophical Survey 

experience, not within the transitory play of the 
conscious content, not in the domain of fleeting ideas, 
but in the extra-conscious organized and organizing 
depths of our real being? 

Pure Idealism having proved wholly inadequate to 
transcend individual consciousness, wholly at a loss to 
reach true reality within the panoramic play of fleeting 
modes of awareness, it devolves upon naturalistic epis- 
temology scientifically to establish the truth of our 
common-sense conviction; the conviction that a per- 
manent, sense -revealed macrocosm exists independent 
of the perceptual awareness casually signalizing 
its presence. Such epistemological corroboration, of 
what we are all instinctively and practically compelled 
to believe and to act upon, should receive more serious 
attention from professional philosophers than they 
have hitherto been inclined to give to it. Pure Ideal- 
ism and psycho-physical Parallelism have become the 
settled views or provisional theories of most students 
who are occupying themselves with philosophical ques- 
tions. The fact should no longer be overlooked or 
ignored that no idealistic thinker, not even Kant, with 
his transcendental Idealism, who labored with life- 
long assiduity to rationally transcend individual con- 
sciousness; that no thinker has ever made legitimate 
headway with the impossible task of finding perma- 
nent reality in anything possessing the ideal nature of 
our mental modes, of our modes of actual awareness, 
the only mental or ideal modes we are at all cogni- 
zant of. 

A pure Idealist cannot — as has been amply shown, 
and has to be insisted upon as a cardinal point — in 
any manner account for the way by which the exist- 
ence of other human beings becomes revealed. For 



The Epistemological Standpoint 113 

he denies the self-transcending significance of percep- 
tual awareness, the only direct and actual awareness 
we have of them. He cannot, therefore, consistently 
admit their real existence, or indeed his own substan- 
tial existence, much less the existence of universal 
Being. As a pure Idealist he cannot prove that what 
appears in his conscious content signifies anything 
beyond itself. He cannot legitimately hold any group 
of percepts or any involution of concepts, arising within 
the microcosmic play of awareness to be aught but 
transient, evanescent phenomena. In fine, pure Ideal- 
ism of any kind involves inextricably outright phenom- 
enal Nihilism. 

This being so, it has now to be shown that with the 
help of a naturalistic epistemology the real transphe- 
nomenal existence of other human beings, and with it 
the existence of our own individual being, and of that 
of other perceptible things, can be satisfactorily reached 
as rational and legitimate inference on the perceptual 
side of actual awareness. Naturalists, no longer sat- 
isfied with materialistic views, have lately become con- 
vinced that their interpretation of natural phenomena 
has indispensably to be grounded on a sound theory 
of knowledge, and this is the task here attempted. 

When the epistemological demonstration of the trans- 
phenomenal existence of what is signalized in percep- 
tual awareness was here entered upon on a former 
occasion, wc found ourselves estopped by the crucial 
question concerning the real existence of other human 
beings as independently subsisting percipients, who as 
such would then conclusively corroborate the extra- 
conscious significance of our individual percepts. It is 
undeniable that the real being of such percipients can- 
not be found amorm the ideal modes of our conscious- 



ii4 Philosophical Survey 

ness, through which they make their appearance in 
actual awareness. For this reason pure Idealism can 
nowise consistently admit their self -existence. Yet, 
despite idealistic consistency, no one, not the Idealist 
himself, seriously doubts that their perceptual aware- 
ness signalizes their real, extra -conscious existence. 
And no one can seriously doubt that it is his own real 
being which becomes revealed to himself by means of 
tactual, visual, and other modes of sensorial affection, 
and which he most intimately knows to be his own 
body. It is a positive fact, that we base our unhesi- 
tating, direct recognition of, and our absolute practi- 
cal belief in the real existence of other human beings, 
entirely and solely on our perceptual revelation of 
their presence. And, on the other hand, we unques- 
tionably accept as valid their perceptual recognition 
of our own being, and consequently also their percep- 
tual corroboration of the transphenomenal meaning 
of percepts which we believe to signalize real, extra- 
conscious existents. Of course, all this is epistemo- 
logical inference from the compelled presence of our 
percepts. And, thus far, our epistemological conclu- 
sions rest on what may be called circumstantial evi- 
dence. 

Let us see how far such evidence will bring us. I 
feel, for instance, by means of organic sensations 
directly in a definite spatial position what is called my 
great toe. I feel it again, indirectly but even more 
distinctly as a resistant form, when I tactually explore 
the organically felt toe. And by means of visual sen- 
sations I realize for a third time the same existent, 
occupying the same place. Furthermore, quite irre- 
spective and independent of these three modes of my 
own awareness, any outsider can consciously recognize 



The Epistemological Standpoint 115 

the same object at the same spot, by means of his 
visual, and also by means of his tactual sensations. 
Surely, these many different modes of casual aware- 
ness, realizable at any time, signifying in sundry ways 
one and the same inevitably inferred existent, imply the 
actual presence of one and the same permanent entity 
compelling conscious awareness in these sundry ways 
and in sundry percipients. And how can an outsider's 
visual and tactual percept which he calls my great toe, 
be my real great toe? How can something forming 
part of his evanescent conscious content be something 
permanently belonging to me? And my own sen- 
sorial awareness of my great toe, duplicating that of 
the outside beholder, stands evidently in the same 
merely signalizing relation to my real great toe, as his 
perceptual awareness of it. The conclusion cannot 
be avoided, that one and the same real, permanent, 
extra-conscious existent arouses percepts which signal- 
ize its presence and characteristics in as many perci- 
pients as may behold it, myself included. Here, in 
order to fortify the argument, the real existence of 
other percipients is assumed on the strength of its all 
but universal admission. But the epistemological 
proof of such existence, without which the idealistic 
ghost would not be completely exorcised, shall be 
presently forthcoming. 

When, let us say, the percept called a stick is forcibly 
aroused in me, and I break the stick in two, is it the 
perceptual stick I have really broken? Or is it not 
rather a permanent, extra-conscious existent that I 
have been breaking ? The signalizing percept vanishes 
as soon as I shut my eyes or turn away. But hence- 
forth, not only in myself, but in any other beholder, a 
percept representing the two pieces of the stick, instead 



n6 Philosophical Survey 

of the fprmer unbroken stick, will under appropriate 
sensorial conditions be invariably aroused. 

Again, let there be simultaneously present within 
the conscious content the percept called ''lead" in 
contact with the percept called "fire." The percept 
lead changes soon visibly from what is called a solid 
into what is called a liquid. Now was it here the per- 
ceptual or ideal lead that has actually melted, and was 
it the influence of the perceptual ideal fire that caused 
it to melt? Or was not rather the perceptual change 
a mere sensorially awakened sign of what really took 
place between extra-conscious power-endowed modes 
of existence? 

When you draw on paper the plan of a house you 
have ideally conceived, and have it then actually 
built by a number of masons and carpenters, and 
you afterwards behold the ideally conceived house 
solidly erected in brick and mortar, and move into it 
with your family ; have all these events taken place in 
the sphere of pure ideality, which really means as mere 
mental phenomena within your own consciousness? 
And if so extravagant a theory, based on the denial 
of the transphenomenal significance of percepts, can 
find, no rational support, then all those occurrences 
must inevitably have taken place in an extra-con- 
scious sphere of permanent existence; and your 
casual perceptual awareness of it, which can have 
accrued to you solely through sensorial channels, has 
merely fitfully and fractionally signalized what has 
really happened quite independently of your perceiving 
it. And what you have perceived was certainly not 
anything taking place in the ideal consciousness of 
ideal masons and carpenters. 

That our conscious awareness of time and space is 



The Epistemological Standpoint 117 

purely subjective, purely our own individual modes of 
awareness, is an indisputable fact. Our subjective 
consciousness of time, occurring in the moment of 
awareness we call the " present, " is entirely dependent 
on what we call our "memory." If we did not 
remember in succeeding moments what had occurred 
in preceding moments we could have no time-con- 
sciousness. Our space consciousness forms no less 
part of our moment of actual awareness. Our visual 
space is a perceptual phenomenon consisting of lumi- 
nous extension with definite determinations of shaded 
and colored forms. Our consciousness of tactual 
space consists of a definite series of remembered feel- 
ings of resistance and movement. 

Idealists can acknowledge no other existence of time 
and space than that subjectively experienced. Yet it is 
obvious that to subjective time and space there cor- 
responds an objective, extra-conscious prototype of 
time and space, to which subjective consciousness has 
become phyletically attuned. This fact is positively 
demonstrated by the congruent objective correspond- 
ence of the time and space consciousnesses of all beings 
endowed with sensorial sensibilities. How otherwise 
could be explained, for instance, the appointed meet- 
ing of whatever number of persons at a definite time 
in a definite locality? Though each person is exclu- 
sively guided by his subjective time and space con- 
sciousness, yet all these separate consciousnesses could 
not accurately coincide and guide their respective 
bearers to reach the same place at the same time, 
unless they were congruently attuned to one and the 
same objective, extra-conscious time and space world. 
\Vliri> flics are attracted by scent from afar to one and 
the same spot where 1 see a carcass lying, this one spot 



n8 Philosophical Survey 

of space is surely not anything that exists exclusively 
and separately in the many consciousnesses of the flies 
and of myself. Evidently something emanating from 
the objective spot has affected the sense of smell of 
the widely dispersed individuals, drawing them all 
to the same spot as distinguished from all other spots in 
the wide world. And surely these many flies have not 
come to swarm round the spot which exclusively forms 
part of my own subjective space consciousness, which 
consciousness includes the perceived carcass and the 
perceived flies. 

Idealists can offer no explanation for these constantly 
experienced attunements of individual facts of separate 
consciousnesses, serving as reliable guides in the attain- 
ment of one and the same objective goal. In order to 
carry their point, they have to deny the existence of a 
plurality of perceptible individuals, declaring it to be 
an illusion of sense, to which all too absurd extremity 
they actually find themselves driven. 

These obvious commonplace considerations, practi- 
cally admitted by every one, are, one would think, 
sufficiently decisive to expose the utter invalidity of 
pure Idealism, and render certain the existence of a 
real, extra-conscious universe, where all creative and 
constructive work is being carried on. But, as pure 
Idealism has for various reasons gained such firm hold, 
not only upon speculative philosophers, but also upon 
scientific thinkers, it will be well to enforce the demon- 
stration of its insufficiency by still stronger evidence. 
It is an undeniable fact that you perceive what you 
call other human beings solely by means of sensorial 
affections aroused in you by agencies over which you 
have no essential control. You feel compelled to per- 
ceive most distinctly the colored and shaded forms vou 



The Epistemological Standpoint 119 

instinctively take to represent other human beings. 
And you confirm and strengthen this belief by means 
of tactual and auditory sensations, seemingly accru- 
ing to you from the presence of these beings. You 
have to admit that without these compelled sensorial 
impressions you would be wholly unconscious of their 
presence and characteristics. If you were blind, and 
did not hear or touch me, my presence would be 
non-existent for you. In fact, without sensorial impres- 
sions the entire perceptible world, which now undeni- 
ably forms part of your conscious content, would be 
non-existent for you, as it would be for all beings 
devoid of sensorial sensibilities. 

Surely, the non-existence of the perceptual or so- 
called external world within the conscious content, 
in the absence of sensorial impressions, is a positive 
fact that no argument can spirit away. Study the 
life -history of deaf and blind persons, and though the 
most fundamental sense, that of touch, is left them, 
they are found not only to have no other consciousness 
of what is called the external world save that derived 
from primitive touch; but, moreover, they remain 
idiotic, with only rudimentary intelligence, unless it 
be laboriously awakened in its potential innate matrix 
by means of linguistic teaching, inculcating the rational 
import of the tactual linguistic signs. 

To unsophisticated common sense it must seem 
inconceivable how transcendental Idealism can come 
completely to ignore or contemptuously to slight the 
essential and altogether indispensable part played by 
sensorial impressions in the formation of ideas, notions, 
or concepts; and this in order to deduce experience 
and knowledge ratiocinatively as derived from partial 
conceptual recognition of an eternally complete sys- 



120 Philosophical Survey 

tern of ideas constituting an hypostasized absolute 
Being. The strength of the position of transcendental 
Idealism as a genuine philosophical doctrine, when not, 
as usual, adulterated with irrelevant theological pre- 
conceptions, lies in the fact that in the adult state our 
conscious content may actually issue into awareness 
as ready-made, systematized knowledge, in the absence 
of casual sensorial impressions received at the time 
being. The decisive question here is, Whence does it 
arise? Where is the real matrix of this ready-made 
knowledge to be found? How has it been originally 
acquired ? Its source must evidently transcend in its 
permanent, all-comprising nature the ephemeral, time- 
scattered conscious phenomena that flow from it with- 
out exhausting its phenomena-emitting capacity or 
impairing its identity. // must combine within itself 
the rationally inferred properties of Substance or Being, 
with the seemingly incompatible experiential fact of cease- 
less becoming. 

The quest after this necessarily inferred matrix of 
all-revealing consciousness constitutes the principal 
task of philosophy. For it is this paradoxical sub- 
stance or matrix of consciousness, identically abiding 
yet ever spending itself in conscious outflow, that all 
epistemology is really in search of. That it cannot be 
found in an hypostasized Absolute has been clearly 
shown. Consequently, the epistemological search has 
to proceed on the naturalistic track. 

When held to be inferred from experiential data, the 
existence of an Absolute cannot be rightly used vice 
versa as preexisting ground, from which have to be 
deduced the very same experiential data upon which 
its own hypothetical existence was founded. And 
when not inferred from experiential data, then its 



The Epistemological Standpoint 121 

existence must be declared to be an innately or tran- 
scendently revealed idea, which assertion has proved to 
be philosophically inadmissible. 

In further decisive corroboration of naturalistic 
Realism is to be brought forward the indisputable fact, 
that, if the other human beings, instinctively believed 
to exist independently of being perceived, and whose 
existence as such pure Idealism has consistently to 
deny; if these other human beings were of pure ideal 
consistency, as Transcendentalists declare them to be, 
they would then be wholly invisible, intangible, and 
inaudible, in fact absolutely non-existent to you or 
me. For it is quite certain that everything which 
constitutes their ideal nature, sensations, perceptions, 
thoughts, feelings, cravings, and emotions; that what- 
ever composes their own ideal being can neither be 
seen nor touched nor heard. 

Consequently, and this is of paramount importance, 
if other human beings subsist as entities not having 
their existence solely in your own conscious content, 
then that which is perceptible of them, that which is 
signalized by your visual, tactual, and auditory per- 
ceptions, the only direct awareness you have of them, 
must necessarily consist of something differing radically 
from what is considered to be ideal. That which has 
power to affect your sensorial sensibilities, and arouse 
in you the definite compulsory percepts representing 
other human beings, must be something incomparably 
more permanent and real than the mere fleeting mental 
phenomena that constitute your own visual, tactual, 
and auditory awareness, and, likewise the conscious- 
ness or ideal nature of the other perceived human 
beings. Whatever ideal endowments these other 
human beings possess, they can nowise affect your 



122 Philosophical Survey 

sensorial sensibilities. It is certainly not their ideal 
endowments that you see, touch, and hear. This 
argument proves, that, if other human beings really 
exist outside your own conscious content, they must 
be relatively permanent, power-endowed entities, 
whose non-ideal nature forces its presence and charac- 
teristics upon you, by affecting in specific ways your 
sensorial sensibilities. And as to their ideal endow- 
ments, you apprehend these solely by means of sen- 
sorial signs interpreted in accordance with your own 
corresponding ideal endowments. 

Deny the independent, non-ideal consistency of 
other human beings, and what you take to be such 
must then consist exclusively of your own phenomenal 
and evanescent percepts, either flashed upon you by a 
divine flat, as Berkeley believed ; or they must arise out 
of nothingness, as is the consistent outcome of Hume's 
and his followers pure Phenomenalism ; or they can be 
only unaccountably called forth from the depths of 
your unconscious Ego, as Fichte and Leibnitz main- 
tained. 

These are the two alternatives: either the other 
human beings, and with them all other things, are only 
your own solipsistic perceptual phantoms ; or they are 
enduring, force-endowed, extra-conscious beings, sub- 
sisting independently of your casually perceiving them. 
No verdict of the purely conceptual order has here a 
right to intrude. For, as the entire actual awareness 
of other human beings consists wholly and undeniably 
of perceptual appearances, the conceptual evolutions 
with which transcendental Idealism exclusively oper- 
ates are here entirely debarred. Conceptual awareness 
is utterly impotent to evolve the perceptual appear- 
ances which alone constitute the actual awareness 



The Epistemological Standpoint 123 

of what are called other human beings and other 
things. 

It would seem that no sane person realizing this 
inevitable epistemological dilemma, however forcibly 
urged by the logical implications of his preadopted 
conceptual premises, can hesitate in his choice between 
the two alternatives offering themselves for selection 
in connection with this supreme epistemological ques- 
tion. Either pure ideal Solipsism or naturalistic 
Realism, 



VII. NATURALISTIC IMPLICATIONS 

It has been shown that neither sensualistic nor 
transcendental Idealism; nor indeed any kind of pure 
Idealism, has ever found or can ever find a way 
legitimately to escape and to transcend the Phenom- 
enalism, Nonsubstantialism, and Nihilism necessarily 
involved in taking the forceless, evanescent mental or 
ideal modes composing the conscious content to 
possess self -subsisting reality. The genuine epistemo- 
logical problem comes to light with the recognition of 
the out and out phenomenality of all conscious aware- 
ness. And the task was then to demonstrate, on the 
one hand, the existence of a permanent matrix, whence 
the evanescent conscious content arises; and, on the 
other hand, to establish the transphenomenal signi- 
ficance of our conscious states or modes of awareness. 
In opposition to all pure Idealism it has been epistemo- 
logically shown that the permanent matrix, whence 
the evanescent conscious content issues into aware- 
ness, must be of a nature differing toto genere from 
anything forming part of the conscious content itself ; 
that the conscious states called " cognitions " signify 
experientially accrued and accruing knowledge; and 
that the vivid and definite modes of cognition called 
"sense-perceptions" signify directly extra-conscious, 
power-endowed existents, which make their presence 
and characteristics known by affecting in specific ways 
our sundry modes of sensibility. 

It follows that what we perceive as human beings, 
ourselves included, together with all other perceptual 

124 



Naturalistic Implications 125 

objects; that such direct percepts represent in all 
verity extra-conscious existents, whose presence and 
characteristics are thus perceptually revealed to 
percipient beholders. And thereby was disproved the 
monstrous idealistic contention of pure Sensualism 
that human beings and other perceptible existents 
exist merely as certain sensorial appearances within 
the beholder's own perceptual awareness; or, as other 
modes of Idealism maintain, that they consist, at best, 
of some sort of ideal substance or mind-stuff, either as 
self-subsisting monads, or as forming part of an hypo- 
stasized Absolute or universal Intelligence. It is quite 
certain, however, that such ideally constituted beings, 
of whatever kind, could be neither seen nor touched 
nor heard, and would therefore be non-existent to one 
another. 

These considerations render evident, that, though 
the immediate object of physical, anatomical, and 
physiological research consists of the investigator's 
own percepts, yet it is preeminently true that the 
essential use and office of these casual and vanishing 
percepts is to vividly and minutely signalize the 
presence, characteristics, and activities of real endur- 
ing existents, which are affecting in specific ways the 
observer's sensibilities. The reason why this obvious 
epistemological state of things, though generally 
straightway assumed, has, despite endless controversy 
and discussion, remained philosophically obscure, un- 
decided, and contradicted, is chiefly due to the non- 
recognition of the complete forceless and evanescent 
consistency of all conscious tates, and of what this 
utter phenomenality of consciou ness consistently 
implies. Mere perceptual or conceptual constituents 
of the fleeting conscious content have by Idealism been 



126 Philosophical Survey 

substantialized into fictitious permanency as real 
constituents of the universe, with no other speculative 
result than the utter dissipation and volatilization of 
true reality. 

From the standpoint of consistent sensualistic 
Idealism science would be impossible. For there is no 
way of staying and handling the constant flux of 
conscious appearances as such. They can nowise be 
weighed, measured, placed under the microscope and 
photographed. This holds good even if it were true 
that the continued presence of the perceptual appear- 
ances under investigation could, whenever required, 
be secured by some idealistic means regardless of 
direct sense-stimulation. A world consisting of noth- 
ing but dreamlike apparitions could never constitute 
the steadfast, verifiable objects so definitely investi- 
gated by natural science; nor could it constitute the 
scientist himself. 

To consistent transcendental Idealism, on the other 
hand, perceptual awareness, and with it perceptual 
science, is altogether meaningless, however ingeniously 
it seeks to dodge this absurd outcome of its system of 
ideas. For it really involves the utter emptiness and 
nothingness of its fancied intelligible world. It can 
only pretend to deal with science of any kind, and, 
indeed, with aught that concerns our known world, 
by surreptitiously including in its conceptual maneu- 
verings directly or by implication all manner of per- 
ceptual and other experiential data. There should 
remain no shadow of a doubt as to the naturalistic 
bearings of our perceptual awareness. It is through 
interaction with the perceptible world that life origi- 
nates, is sustained, and organically develops; that our 
instinctive needs find their satisfaction, and our 



Naturalistic Implications 127 

volition its practical, social, and ethical fulfillment; 
that our feelings are incited and our emotions called 
forth; that physical science obtains its object of 
research, and psychical science its transphenomenal 
foundation. Bereft of all perceptual influx, and its 
naturalistic bearings, what content would there be left 
to the purely ideal sphere? The fact is, that body and 
mind we are molded in correspondence to what 
constitutes our environment, in interaction with which 
our life is sustained and carried on. The actual source 
of perceptual awareness, or rather of definite percepts, 
is conclusively proved by persons whose senses are 
deficient. The blind and deaf, and eminently the deaf 
and blind, demonstrate positively, that, despite their 
innate endowments, their consciousness is devoid of 
the percepts normally awakened through external 
stimulation of the senses of which they are deprived; 
and consequently also devoid of the concepts or ideas 
representing them. Surely this obvious and undeniable 
state of things alone suffices to prove the primacy of 
perceptual over conceptual cognition. But mere con- 
ceptual thinking has become so inveterate a habit in 
scholastic circles, where a flatus vocis counts for more 
than an actual fact of nature, that it will prove a 
hard task to supersede in philosophical conviction this 
sterile and facile predilection. 

When you perceive your friend, when you see, hear, 
and touch him, and your philosophy teaches you, 
that this apparent friend consists really of nothing but 
these your own sensations and percepts; that it is a 
delusion to believe that what you thus perceive has 
any self-existence, any real being outside your own 
conscious content ; surely you must then begin seriously 
to suspect that your philosophy has entangled your 



128 Philosophical Survey 

thought in a distracting maze, and that it is high time 
to seek for a clew by which you can thread your way 
back to the sane outlook of common sense. It is 
indeed certain that your entire direct awareness of your 
friend consists of perceptual phenomena forming part 
of your own conscious content. But it is just as cer- 
tain that your friend does not himself consist of these 
casual and evanescent conscious states of yours. 
And it is also just as certain that you do not per- 
ceive, that you do not see, hear, and touch your 
friend's mental or ideal being; that this is revealed to 
you in a roundabout way by means of sensorial signs. 
Consequently and irrefragably, if your friend really 
consisted of nothing but such ideal or mind-stuff as 
declared by pure Idealism ; his being would, as already 
insisted upon, be wholly imperceptible. You could 
never become aware of his presence. It is, however, 
a positive fact not to be argued away, that you do 
perceive your friend, that you are most distinctly and 
definitely conscious of his presence and distinguishing 
features, and that this his perceptible being does not 
consist of ideal or mind-stuff. 

This plain and indubitable consideration debars, as 
already stated, transcendental or intellectual Idealism, 
once for all, from having any voice whatever in this 
essential contention concerning the independent exist- 
ence of what we believe to be other human beings, and 
the things of the world at large. For as it declares 
outright that our entire perceptual awareness is an 
illusive phantasmagoria, a mere confused outcome of 
inadequate cognition, it has to ignore its real signifi- 
cance. 

After the previous epistemological discussion it can 
no longer be deemed doubtful, that what in various 



Naturalistic Implications 129 

ways becomes vividly and minutely signalized as other 
human beings and the other things of the world at 
large, conveys, in truth, so far as mere sensorial and 
phenomenal signs admit, a correct, reliable knowledge 
of their perceptible nature. Thus, when we scientifi- 
cally examine a perceptible existent, say a human brain, 
it is in all verity the morphological and physiological 
characteristics of a real independently existing entity 
we are examining, and not merely our own perceptual 
awareness of it. The sensorial signs, by means of 
which these characteristics are revealed, are, it is true, 
mere superficial and evanescent phenomena, consist- 
ing mostly of shaded and colored visual forms and their 
mutual connections. But, so far as the nature of these 
sensorial signs allows, they faithfully represent the 
minutely organized presence and activity of a genuine 
naturalistic, and not of a merely ideal existent. 

The principal difficulty in the way of the adoption 
of the naturalistic view here advocated, of the view, 
namely, that consciousness emanates from what is 
perceptually revealed as the organism and especially 
its brain, and not from a purely ideal substance; the 
seemingly insuperable difficulty here encountered has 
ever been the impossibility of conceiving how the 
molecular motion of a material body, such as the brain 
is held to be, can in any way be transformed into 
conscious states, how motion can be converted into 
sensation, or at all give rise to it. The glaring incom- 
mensurability obtaining between material motion of 
any kind and sensation, or any other mental or con- 
scious mode, renders their interconvertibility or causal 
connection unthinkable. On the strength of much 
practical and scientific evidence most biologists and 
some psychologists are fully convinced that what we 



130 Philosophical Survey 

perceive as the brain is in some manner the seat and 
matrix of consciousness. Only they fail to under- 
stand how this can possibly be the case, how a physio- 
logical function can result in a psychical effect. This 
being utterly incomprehensible, they either give up 
the puzzle as wholly insoluble, or they rest satisfied 
with psychophysical Parallelism. 

In order to overcome in this connection the repug- 
nance naturally attaching to the seemingly material- 
istic view, that our conscious content is a functional 
outcome of what is perceived as our organism, it may 
be well clearly to remind ourselves on what actual 
foundation the apparently trenchant dualism of body 
and mind is in reality based. 

Let, then, a definite conscious content arise without 
direct sense-stimulation out of latent memory to fill 
the actual moment of awareness of a certain subject 
perceived by an outside observer. This conscious 
content will be all in all that is directly and subjec- 
tively revealed or present to the observed subject. On 
the same occasion in the outside observer, on the other 
hand, through roundabout means of definite sen- 
sorial stimulation, an entirely different conscious con- 
tent correspondingly arises. He distinctly perceives 
a body or organism, and would, in case his vision 
happened to be sufficiently penetrating, moreover, 
become aware that in the brain of the perceptually 
revealed organism there is occurring a definite func- 
tional commotion. 

From this undeniable state of things it follows that 
the perceptual organism within the conscious content 
of the observer cannot possibly belong to the observed 
subject, cannot be the subject's real organic being. 
Nor can the perceived functional brain-commotion, 



Naturalistic Implications 131 

forming likewise part of the observer's conscious con- 
tent, be the real functional activity which is causing 
the emergence of the totally different conscious con- 
tent in the observed subject. Hence the irrecon- 
cilable duality of body and mind. For what is here 
called the bodily organism is really a percept which 
may form part of the conscious content of any outside 
observer, or of any number of such observers. While 
what is here called mind is the exclusive conscious 
awareness of the observed subject. In this light it 
becomes evident why such a body cannot emanate 
mind, and why such mind cannot move or actuate what 
is perceived as body; simply because the perceived 
body forms part of the conscious content of a different 
person from the one who experiences the concomitant 
mental state. 

The observed subject can, of course, likewise be- 
come aware of the perceptual body, just as the ob- 
server, by means of sense-stimulation. It is true, this 
body, though forming equally with other bodies part 
of his conscious content, is felt quite particularly to 
belong to himself. This, however, is due to inner or 
organic sensations spatially corroborating the exter- 
nally stimulated sensations and percepts of sight and 
touch. I feel by means of inner sensations what is 
called my hand to be occupying a definite position 
in space. Through sight and touch this inner experi- 
ence is corroborated in perceptual awareness, and vice 
versa. But the perceived body or organism is here, 
also like all other perceived bodies, only a transient 
sense-stimulated perceptual constituent of the con- 
scious content, and is nowise the real organic being. 

From the same actual state of things it can be 
furthermore rightly concluded, that it is an extra- 



13 2 • Philosophical Survey 

conscious activity within the extra-conscious being of 
the perceptually revealed subject, which causes his own 
moment of awareness to be filled with a definite con- 
scious content, and which simultaneously causes to 
arise in the observer's conscious awareness a correspond- 
ing functional brain-commotion. The observed sub- 
jects conscious content is thus proved to be a func- 
tional outcome of his real extra-conscious being, 
and not of that which is only vicariously and sym- 
bolically revealed as the perceptual organism forming 
part of the observer's conscious content. 

The perceptual organism and its functional brain- 
commotion within the observer's conscious content has 
obviously nothing whatever to do with bringing about 
what actually occurs in the observed subject. It has 
no effective influence upon it, though it vividly reveals 
the presence, characteristics, and activities of the real 
extra-conscious being of the observed subject. 

It is clear, moreover, that the perceptual organism, 
forming part of the conscious content of the observer, 
is not only not a material body, as is generally taken 
for granted, but that it is, on the contrary, out and 
out of the same forceless, evanescent psychic consis- 
tency as the transient conscious content of the observed 
subject. There obtains here absolutely no duality of 
nature between mind and body, for the organism 
actually and bodily perceived is just as much a psychic 
phenomenon as the conscious content of the observed 
subject. 

It is evident, however, that the perceptual organism 
and its definite brain-commotion is aroused in the 
observer by stimulating influences emanating from 
the real power-endowed, extra-conscious subject he 
is observing, and that it reveals therewith with vivid 



Naturalistic Implications 133 

precision, though vicariously and symbolically in 
terms of perceptual consciousness, its presence, char- 
acteristics, and activities. 

As to the observed subject's own conscious content, 
consisting, as it does, of a complex of feelings, sensa- 
tions, perceptions, emotions, volitions, and thoughts, 
it is like all modes of consciousness utterly forceless and 
evanescent, a mere content of lapsing time with no 
power whatever to stimulate the senses of observers, 
or to influence other existents in any direct manner. 
A being consisting of nothing but what is actually 
experienced as psychical would, as has been epistemo- 
logically shown, be wholly imperceptible to observers, 
wholly non-existent and non-efficient. 

The epistemological explanation, here again reiter- 
ated, of the apparent duality of mind and body, 
based on undeniable facts as it actually is, solves an 
ancient and obdurate riddle that has played a most 
conspicuous part in philosophical contemplation. It 
is pregnant with the weightiest consequences. For 
it renders evident that it is the real, extra-conscious, 
power-endowed existent perceptually revealed as our 
organism, that is the veritable bearer, veritable 
actuating matrix and manifesting agent of our all- 
revealing conscious content. This our real being 
emits directly, from within, our own conscious content; 
and indirectly, through roundabout external sense- 
stimulation, it compels also its perceptual represen- 
tation in observers. 

The observer's perceptual awareness of the organic 
body constitutes its physical, sense-stimulated aspect. 
And it is this perceptual organism which is the direct 
object of biological research. A biological investiga- 
tor has consciously before him as direct object of re- 



134 Philosophical Survey 

search only his own sense-stimulated percepts. If 
these did not reveal the real existence of an extra- 
conscious being, subsisting independently of being 
thus perceived, he would then be investigating noth- 
ing but his own unaccountably arising conscious states, 
and pure solipsistic Phenomenalism would be the con- 
sistent outcome of such a state of things. 1 

It would be a mistake to think that the simple 
epistemological solution of the perennial dilemma of 
body and mind here advanced is gained by merely 
offering another kind of Dualism for that introduced by 
Descartes ; namely, on the one side the forceless, 
transient conscious content, including all we are 
actually aware of as body and mind ; and on the other 
side a world of enduring extra-conscious existents in 
forceful interaction with one another. The all-re- 
vealing conscious content is, however, quite obviously, 
only a casual outcome of certain modes of activity of 
the enduring, extra-conscious existent or subject, who 
becomes aware of it as his own conscious content. It 
is a specific function of his own definitely organized 
self, immediately and exclusively experienced by him, 
and receiving its significance by being composed of 
conscious signs, which signalize what is happening in 
the sphere of real, extra-conscious existence. And 
the entities that compose the extra-conscious macro- 
cosm prove to have, besides many other modes of 
efficiency, the unremitting power to stimulate in definite 
ways the sensibilities of living organic beings, so as to 

1 This plain epistemological solution of the philosophical riddle 
of body and mind has been published by the present writer for the 
last twenty-eight years in a number of articles, the last appearing 
in the American Journal of Psychology, April, 1905, as extract 
from this treatise. 



Naturalistic Implications 135 

make their presence and characteristics known to 
them ; an unremitting power evinced likewise, and more 
completely still, in their action upon photographic 
plates or films. 

There exists, therefore, in reality only one unitary 
cosmos, consisting of interdependent, power-endowed, 
extra-conscious entities. Of this cosmos of interde- 
pendent existents the extra-conscious organic individ- 
ual forms a highly elaborated integrant part; and his 
all-revealing conscious content is here on earth the 
supreme outcome of vital interaction with the outside 
world. 

In order adequately to realize that such wondrous 
potencies may indeed inhere in existents, of which we 
have only perceptual knowledge, it is of utmost impor- 
tance to recognize how remotely symbolical of the 
real nature of the extra-conscious existents our per- 
ception of them must necessarily be. Although 
tactual sensations, themselves mere transient modes 
of awareness, yield the most direct and positive signs 
of the presence of extra-conscious existents, we practi- 
cally and scientifically infer their presence and char- 
acteristics principally by means of visual percepts. 
How, then, are these visual percepts aroused, and in 
what do they consist"" 

An intervening medium is here with necessity inferred 
by science as mediating between the percipient and the 
perceptible existents; between, let us say, a scientist 
and the extra-conscious organ he is investigating, 
and which is visually revealed to him as a brain. Con- 
sequently it can only be specific modifications of the 
intervening medium, impressed upon it by the distant 
extra-conscious entity, that are directly affecting the 
observer's visual sensibilities, arousing the signaliz- 



13 6 Philosophical Survey 

ing percept called a brain to make its appearance 
within his conscious content. The specific ethereal 
or radiant influence, the only influence that reaches 
the observer's vision from outside, is obviously not 
itself the entity which the aroused percept signalizes, 
but only a specific mode of activity imparted by the 
same to the adjacent medium. Consequently and 
incontestably, the entire perceptual appearance made 
to arise in the percipient, by a definite mode of such 
vicarious stimulation emanating from the perceptible 
object, is out and out a product of the percipient's own 
organic being. How adventitious, then, and yet how 
subtly specific and widely irradiating must be the 
stimulating influence that reaches from afar the sense- 
affected being, and that may reach at the same time 
thousands of such percipient beings. And as regards 
the signalizing visual percept itself, aroused in this 
vicarious manner, it is found to consist of nothing but 
shaded and colored modifications of our general space 
perception. The real perceptible entity is, therefore, 
consciously represented in the percipient subject by 
nothing but ethereally aroused visual phantoms. 
Other than visible characteristics of the same entity 
may, of course, become additionally signalized by 
stimulation of our other sensorial sensibilities; but 
always only by remotely symbolical signs, as in the 
case of vision. 

It is, consequently, an unknown activity, unknown 
as to the way it extra-consciously operates, which is 
unremittingly imparted to the medium, and which 
casually arouses in observers the percepts signalizing 
the presence and characteristics of the perceptible 
entity from which it emanates. The unknown agent 
which directly arouses vision cannot be rightly called 



Naturalistic Implications 137 

"light." For light is merely one of its effects in 
relation to our visual sensibility. Nor can it be 
rightly called " ethereal vibrations," for these again 
are merely a visual representation of what is believed 
to be the special mode of the extra-conscious activity. 
Like all other activity in nature, it makes its presence 
known to us solely by means of the conscious modes 
it awakens. And it receives its marvelously specialized 
character from influences emanating from the distant 
entity whose visible presence and minute spatial 
features it vicariously conveys to the percipient. It 
is clear that only an evolutionally developed pre- 
established harmony can here render the definite per- 
cept arising within the percipient strictly and minutely 
representative of the corresponding perceptible entity 
subsisting outside the percipient's being. 

The final outcome of this complex process of effectu- 
ation is, in the special case under consideration, the 
definitely shaded and colored visual form we call a 
brain, whose most intricate and minutely organized 
structure we are getting intimately to know by means 
of artificially heightened and assisted vision. Under 
such eminently vicarious conditions of visual percepti- 
bility it is evident how superficial and remotely 
emblematic of the real, extra-conscious entity, despite 
all its vivid and definite configuration, must be the 
casual and transient visual percept called a brain. 

And this being so, what legitimate grounds have we 
to deny to this extra -conscious, power-endowed entity, 
proved to be most gradually and toilsomely organized, 
and which is only vicariously, superficially, and emblem- 
atically revealed ; what grounds to deny to it the power 
of emanating the mental modes of which it is mani- 
festly the real matrix? In fact, multifold evidence 



i3 8 Philosophical Survey 

renders inevitable, to all who contemplate it with 
unbiased mind, the conclusion that the real entity, 
which to our visual perception is emblematically 
revealed as brain-structure; that this extra -conscious 
entity is in all reality the permanent, efficient matrix 
which potentially harbors memorized experience, and 
from whose functional activity the conscious content 
issues into manifest existence. This is, indeed, proved 
by its minute and significant organization ; by the defin- 
ite localization within its complex structure of special 
modes of awareness; by its development in the scale 
of animal life parallel to that of the conscious content; 
by strict correspondence of morbid mentality to 
abnormal functional activity and pathological degen- 
eration ; by the loss of consciousness upon cessation of 
its functional activity, and upon final dissolution. 
All this irrefutable evidence, against which the notion 
of an ideal bearer or matrix of consciousness appears to 
biological contemplation to be an altogether fanciful 
creation; all this multifold evidence points con- 
clusively to our individual consciousness being the 
outcome of that which is perceptually revealed as 
functioning brain-structure. 

Indeed, what else could all this definite experience 
concerning the organism and its brain signify, but the 
conscious revelation of a permanent entity to which it 
applies? What imaginable significance could the 
vivid and minutely differentiated perceptual appear- 
ances, whose commotions are found exactly to corre- 
spond to the sundry mental states of an observed 
subject; what imaginable significance but that of 
revealing the activity of the extra-conscious entity, 
which is the real matrix of the observed subject's 
conscious content? 



Naturalistic Implications 139 

Otherwise this perceptual experience regarding the 
brain and its functions could have no meaning beyond 
itself. And all scientific investigation concerning it, 
carried on by a host of close and scrupulous observers 
in the firm conviction that they are investigating a 
real permanent existent, would be but a delusive 
waste of infinitely laborious research. For they 
would then be examining nothing but their own 
individual casual and evanescent percepts, which 
occupation would be utterly wasted, and could nowise 
yield the scientific results actually attained. Nor 
would it be in the least intelligible, how results sepa- 
rately reached by a number of investigators could 
possibly correspond and corroborate one another. 

At the risk of being inordinately tedious, no occasion 
must be passed by to expose again and again the utter 
futility of transcendental and other kinds of pure 
Idealism. They obstruct the way towards a true 
interpretation of nature, and their tenets are still 
leading many serious thinkers astray ; either imprison- 
ing their thought in the magic circle of solipsistic Phe- 
nomenalism, or causing them to look upon actually 
experienced nature and our real life therein as a mere 
inadequate, confused conception of no essential con- 
sequence. The aim of this treatise, on the contrary, 
is scientifically and epistemologically to demonstrate 
that consciousness, and with it all psychic existence 
we have knowledge of, is wholly and strictly dependent 
on specific modes of vital organization. 

To transcendental Idealism, whose raison d'etre is 
to deny that perceptual experience signalizes a per- 
ceptible world subsisting independently of being 
perceived, to such intellectual Idealism the perceptual 
brain with its functions is even more meaningless than 



J 4° Philosophical Survey 

to sensorial Idealism. Under the transcendental view 
these perceptual appearances can have no significance 
whatever for real cognition. They cannot even form 
the sometimes surmised instrument upon which a 
supposed ideal entity is playing conscious tunes. 
For no instrument can possibly be fashioned out of the 
set of casual and transient visual percepts which 
constitute the brain we are actually aware of, its 
material consistency being here altogether out of 
question. To transcendental Idealism the perceptual 
brain is not even what it consciously appears to be, 
but is declared to be a mere illusion of sense. This 
world-estranging, life-negating doctrine holds per- 
ceptual phenomena to have their real being in concepts 
or notions. But it can nowise show how these concepts 
come to their perceptual content. Under this topsy- 
turvy view the general concept of a brain implicitly 
comprises, before and independent of all actual per- 
ceptual experience, everything that becomes even- 
tually revealed by means of perceptual experience 
concerning the brain and its functions. It gradually 
unfolds this ideal and implicit content, so that it per- 
ceptually appears as an endless succession and multi- 
plication of countless numbers of manifoldly organized 
brains, forming part of a multitude of perceptual 
individuals; all this having no real being beyond the 
universal concept, which is thus unfolding itself in 
time and space. This amazingly eccentric view is 
that of consistent transcendental Idealism; for which 
the brain and its individual bearer are in reality noth- 
ing but modes of inadequate conceptual recognition, 
referring to an eternal system of perfect Ideas. 

To epistemological Naturalism the very reverse 
is what actually takes place. A number of real, 



Naturalistic Implications 14 1 

extra-conscious investigators have gathered and com- 
municated concurrent experience of a vast number 
of facts concerning brains, belonging to various classes 
of real animals and to many real human beings. All 
this extensive and minute experience has been pro- 
gressively condensed into the conceptual, representa- 
tive knowledge of the sundry general characteristics 
appertaining to the real existents that were brought 
under observation. This conceptual knowledge has 
evidently no other existence, save as implicitly pre- 
served in the extra-conscious matrix of the conscious 
content of a limited number of individual biologists, 
into which latently abiding matrix it has by. degrees 
been organically inwrought as memorized experience, 
ready to arise on occasion into conscious awareness. 
A conceptual Idealist who had never seen a brain or 
read about it, would most certainly not have the re- 
motest inkling of its appearance. Without manifold, 
definite perceptual experience no concept of brain- 
characteristics could possibly exist. Such conceptual 
knowledge is clearly entirely dependent for its exist- 
ence upon perceptual experience. And this perceptual 
experience is again entirely dependent on the sense- 
arousing influences emanating from the extra-conscious 
existents under observation. Without sensorial and 
perceptual experience concepts would signify nothing 
whatever. 

A concept, being itself merely a transient constituent 
of the conscious content, can have no permanent con- 
tent of its own ; but has to receive, each time it issues 
into consciousness, the entire content it representa- 
tively carries with it from the same latent store of 
memorized experience, whence it itself emanates. It 
is, in fact, a mere conscious representative sign of its 



14 2 Philosophical Survey 

implied content. Consequently, instead of perceptual 
awareness being dependent for its existence on con- 
ceptual awareness and being primordially involved in 
it, as transcendental Idealism maintains, the exact 
reverse is actually and plainly the case. Sound 
reasoning, based on actual experience, rightly concludes 
that the enduring matrix of the entire conscious con- 
tent, of which conceptual as well as perceptual aware- 
ness form integrant parts, proves to be the extra- 
conscious entity perceptually revealed as the organism 
and its wondrously elaborated brain -structure. 

Reverting to the alleged primacy and all-involving 
nature of conceptual cognition, what kind of reality 
is it declared to recognize before being fertilized by 
actually accrued sensorial and perceptual experience? 
The answer is made up of mere negatives. It assumes 
as source of all consciousness and of all existence an 
imperceptible, unknown, purely hypothetical eternal 
totality of Being, which it posits without the least actual 
experience of its existence and nature to go upon, or 
to guide its fancifully transcendentalized supposition. 
What is here really substantialized as an all-compris- 
ing Absolute, or as all-efficient cognition, conation or 
affection, has as its true foundation really nothing more 
than the potentially all-containing matrix of the Ideal- 
ist's own individual consciousness. 

In opposition to such wholly hypothetical Transcen- 
dentalism, it has been here clearly demonstrated that 
our cognitive, conative, and affective modes of con- 
sciousness have one and all no other real transcen- 
dent significance save in relation to the perceptible 
world, our own perceptible being, of course, included. 

Deductive logic and its analytical propositions yield, 
as Kant learnt from Hume, and as he has elaborately 



Naturalistic Implications 143 

shown, no knowledge beyond that, whose material has 
been sensorially given and synthetically apprehended. 
The totality of implicit knowledge from which such 
logic draws explicitly its expositions is that which has 
become organically systematized in the matrix of our 
conscious content where alone it latently abides as 
memorized experience. Quite true what Leibnitz 
asserts inconsistently with his Monadology and in 
opposition to Locke's tabula rasa: "Nihil est in intel- 
lectit quod non juerit in sensu, nisi intellectus ipse." 
But what is here called ''intellect" is neither what 
Leibnitz understood by it, nor Kant's pure reason 
with its synthetizing categories. It is, in fact, the 
entire organically developed individual himself, who 
proves to be rational, because his life and consciousness 
have been evolutionally adapted to the conditions of 
his environment. And he proves, on the contrary, 
to be irrational as soon as this normal adaptation 
becomes abnormal. The matrix of consciousness har- 
bors in potential latency all modes of cognition, and 
consequently also rational modes. 

You discard, as non-existent, all perceptible existence 
inferred by common sense and epistemological Natur- 
alism, as it is being signalized by compelled percepts, 
and nothing remains but the phenomenal conscious 
content as such, which is necessarily itself inferred as 
emanating from an all-containing matrix. It is 
obviously this necessarily inferred matrix of conscious- 
ness that has to play the part of the unconscious con- 
tent of the monads of Leibnitz; also that of Kant's 
intelligible Ego; of Fichte's absolute Ego as all-positing 
act; of Schelling's Subject-Object; of Hegel's absolute 
Idea. And almost from the dawn of philosophical 
contemplation this latent, logically synthetized con- 



i44 Philosophical Survey 

tent of experience or knowledge has been identified with 
the abstract, complex notion called "Reason." And 
this because its rationally significant, logically involuted 
constitution in relation to the outside world, becomes 
revealed as such in its conscious outcomes ; and because 
this conscious outcome is, moreover, to some extent 
subject to the sway of rational volition, of volition 
informed by results of actual experience. 

At times, however, the effective or conative modes 
of consciousness, and especially the latter under the 
name of "Will," have been made in philosophy to 
absorb the cognitive modes, being in their turn hy- 
postasized and substantialized as transcendent, all- 
efficient agencies. Thus "Love" or "Will" are some- 
times conceived as all-containing, all-creating principles 
of Being or Reality. 

It has, one would think, become now sufficiently 
clear, that neither cognitive nor conative nor affec- 
tive modes of implicit or explicit, of potential or 
actual consciousness, be their content ever so logically 
synthetized, have any but experiential significance, 
and this only in final relation to existents of the 
perceptible world, our own perceptible being, and 
that of our fellow-beings naturally included. Our 
real being and its enduring matrix of consciousness 
abide in the sphere of extra-conscious, transphenom- 
enal existence. And the activities that latently 
fashion accruing experiential facts into systematized 
experience or knowledge, which then issues it succes- 
sively and fractionally into actual awareness; these 
inmost activities of the real, extra-conscious individual 
accompany the fleeting conscious appearances atten- 
tively and apprehendingly, and they instinctively or 
volitionally react in an appropriate or purposive man- 



Naturalistic Implications 145 

ner upon the outside world as perceptually revealed. 
These extra-conscious activities, resulting in mental 
occurrences, are set going in the same power-endowed 
sphere, wherein our enduring self and its matrix of 
consciousness have their real being. These specific 
activities of the organic being are, consequently, as 
such, unknown processes, processes taking place outside 
conscious awareness. They are, however, definitely 
signalized by the specific conscious states to which they 
respectively give rise. These conscious states, affec- 
tive, conative, and cognitive, are themselves forceless 
and evanescent. It is our transphenomenal being that 
becomes consciously aware of its vital activities. It 
feels its feelings, perceives its percepts, thinks its 
thoughts, and wills its actions, but only in relation to 
existents of the perceptible world, unless when revel- 
ing in the realm of pure fancy, or when demented. 

In this connection the relation of volition to bodily 
movements has proved preeminently a standing puz- 
zle to philosophical interpretation. Hence Cartesian 
Occasionalism, Leibnitzian preestablished harmony, 
Berkeleyian and other forms of transcendentally 
effected coincidence or parallelism between mental 
volitions and bodily movements. 

The actual state of things, here repeatedly pointed 
out and epistemologically demonstrated, is, how- 
ever, quite obvious. For it is the outside observer, 
who perceives as his own percept, within his own 
conscious content, the body or organism of an ob- 
served subject. And it is the observed subject as an 
extra-conscious being who exercises his volitional 
activity in a certain manner, whereupon the features, 
the arm, or any other member of the perceptual body 
within the observer's conscious content moves in a 



146 Philosophical Survey 

definite manner. It is evident that what the ob- 
served subject has really volitionally actuated is not 
anything perceptually figured within the observer's 
conscious content. The willing individual exerts his 
volitional power irrespective of any perceptual know- 
ledge of the organs he is actuating. He has no direct 
knowledge of what is perceptually known as his brain 
and muscles. He actuates what is perceptually 
signalized to the observer, as, for instance, his arm, 
utterly unconscious of the particular brain-centers, 
the particular muscles, and the visual and tactual 
limb so distinctly perceived to move by the observer. 
He is himself entirely guided by inner organic sensa- 
tion, which differs altogether from sense-stimulated 
perceptual awareness. 

In fact, all perceptually apprehended movements 
or motions in nature are mere visual or tactual signs 
of extra-conscious actuation. The recognition of this 
real state of things is of the utmost importance to the 
true understanding of physical facts. 

In this epistemological light it becomes clear why 
no efficient nexus can be conceived between the so- 
called volitional fiat and the bodily members seen 
thereupon to move. The real nexus obtains here 
between the transphenomenal volitional activity of 
the extra-conscious subject and his own real extra- 
conscious members, and it is the result of this extra- 
conscious process that is perceptually signalized to 
bystanders as bodily movements. 

The living human organism is endowed with the 
power of originating and arresting manifold volitional 
activities; in fact, this activity-controlling power 
intentionally exercised is what is more particularly 
designated as volition. Perceptually signalized, such 



Naturalistic Implications 147 

spontaneity of action would be seen to arise as defi- 
nite brain -commotion, thence to spread to a certain 
set of muscles, resulting in what may be perceived 
by any outsider as a certain movement of features or 
limbs. All this by-play is evidently something quite 
adventitious, which nowise enters into the effective 
volitional nexus, for it all takes place in the conscious 
content of outsiders. The actuating subject sets the 
volitional process going irrespective of any perceptual 
awareness of his own organs, either by himself or by 
others. It is primarily by means of his inner organic 
sensations that the willing individual gains informa- 
tion regarding the existence and position of the mem- 
bers he intends volitionally to actuate. But neither 
do these inner sensations, which indicate by specific 
local signs the member to be moved, enter into the 
effective volitional nexus. As conscious states these 
modes of forceless awareness can merely yield defi- 
nite information to the acting subject, but are 
powerless to impart themselves activity to anything 
whatever. 

The power to initiate volitional activity along pre- 
organized tracts, leading to the execution of pur- 
posive movements, seems to be exerted trigger-fashion 
upon or within what is perceptually signalized as 
brain -structure, and it spreads then along definite 
channels of what is perceptually realized as neural 
and muscular substance. New, unpracticed kinds of 
purposive movements have to be intentionally prac- 
ticed before they can be performed with ease, which 
proves within the sphere of skilled performances a 
certain degree of free spontaneous control over motor 
outcomes not preorganized, but whose pathways 
become eventually structurallv organized under voli- 



i4 8 ' Philosophical Survey 

tional activity. This obvious volitional power over 
what is perceived as structural organization plays a 
most important part in the development of human 
life and in the formation of human character. 

Suitable to the being's vital needs or objective 
desires definite organic nexuses have, however, been 
phyletically established, whose actuation conduces 
more or less automatically to the satisfaction of these 
needs or desires. The special needs are consciously 
signalized by organic feelings, partly affective and 
partly conative. The objective desires are awakened 
by perceived or remembered objects of satisfaction. 
And the satisfaction itself is consciously made known 
by feelings of a pleasurable kind. 

The acting being is immediately conscious only of 
the feeling which indicates the organic need, and the 
sensation, percept, or idea which directly or indirectly 
represents the means of satisfying it. He knows 
immediately nothing of the organic nexus through 
whose actuation the need or desire finds satisfaction; 
nothing of brain, nerves, muscles, and organs of per- 
ception. His vital organism wrought by agencies 
not belonging to the sphere of consciousness, is sus- 
tained and actuated by these same extra-conscious 
powers. The presence of the organic sensation indi- 
cating a vital need or desire ; the conscious state repre- 
senting an object of satisfaction, or the mere idea of 
it, tend by force of a preestablished organic nexus 
more or less imperatively to touch off or incite the 
activity through which the need or desire becomes 
satisfied. 

The organic individual perceives, for example, an 
apple. Let this percept coincide consciously with the 
feeling of hunger. An object through which the vital 



Naturalistic Implications 149 

need finds satisfaction being thus signalized, the 
accustomed activity is intentionally set going, which 
results in the prehension and eating of the percep- 
tually signalized apple. Now, although the entire 
performance takes place through the mediation of 
conscious states ; namely, the conscious feeling called 
hunger, the conscious percept called an apple, and the 
organic sensations accompanying the activity; yet it 
is obviously the extra-conscious organic being who 
feels the hunger, perceives the apple, experiences the 
organic sensations, and performs the purposive actions. 
And it is an extra-conscious object which satisfies the 
hunger. It is not the mere feeling of hunger that is 
really satisfied, but the vital need indicated by the 
feeling. And it is not the perceptual apple that sat- 
isfies the need, but the real existent signalized by the 
visual percept called an apple. And it is not the feel- 
ing of volitional activity that actuates the purposive 
movements, but the extra-conscious, volitionally en- 
dowed subject. 

Surely, despite Berkeley and all consistent Idealists, 
we do not eat our own percepts, nor those of other 
people, not the perceptual apple forming part of our 
own conscious content, and at the same time forming 
also part of the conscious content of any number of 
individuals who may behold it. Nor does the vital 
fruition of eating really consist in getting rid of the 
painful feeling of hunger, and of experiencing in con- 
sequence pleasurable feelings of satisfaction ; but it 
consists in verity of the organic process of nourishment, 
which means structural reintegration following upon 
functional disintegration. This mere instrumentality 
of feelings in the service of extra-conscious processes 
is a fundamental truth of high ethical importance. 



1 5° Philosophical Survey 

To the organic individual, leaving out of account his 
constant organic sensations, there is here immediately 
present to consciousness nothing but the feeling of 
hunger and the perceptual apple, whereupon he brings 
into play the self-acting powers of the extra-conscious 
organic nexus, which ultimately results in the prehen- 
sion and eating of the apple. Notice how meager are 
the conscious accompaniments of this highly complex 
activity taking place within a most intricate organic 
nexus, and followed up, moreover, by a long series of 
unconscious processes which minister to the nutritive 
restoration of the organic being. To pure Idealists 
all these organic processes count for nothing. But can 
there remain a doubt that the extra-conscious organic 
processes and their results play here the essential part, 
to which the concomitant conscious or ideal states are 
mere auxiliary means? 

This evident conclusion is, moreover, corroborated 
by what an outside observer may experience on the 
same occasion. He beholds as his own percept the 
entire body of the acting subject, together with all its 
movements. And, at a distance of this perceptually 
revealed subject he perceives an apple, which is then 
seemingly by means of the movements he perceives 
seized and eaten. And, if possessed of the knowledge 
acquired by scientific investigation, and hypothetically 
endowed with sufficiently keen and penetrating vision, 
the observer would furthermore perceive how the 
apple was imparting a definite, complex motion to the 
intervening medium, how this motion impinged on 
the observed eye of the subject, being then propagated 
along the optic track, reaching the cerebral visual 
centers, where a specific commotion became visible 
amid its marvelously minute and intricate structure; 



Naturalistic Implications 151 

the motion taking then a downward course along cer- 
tain motor nerves, ending in the contraction of a 
definite set of muscles, and resulting ultimately in the 
prehension and eating of the apple. 

All these observed facts consist entirely of a series 
of conscious phenomena arising in the conscious con- 
tent of the observer. The perceived apple, the body 
of the observed subject with all its organic structures, 
and all its functional motions and purposive move- 
ments, all this accrues to the observer as his own 
perceptual awareness. How rich and instructive must 
be deemed this conscious experience of the observer 
compared with that of the acting subject on the same 
occasion. And this, notwithstanding that it merely 
consciously signalizes, by means of ineffective, tran- 
sient, symbolical phenomena, what is actually and 
effectively taking place in the extra-conscious being 
of the observed subject. 

All these perceptual occurrences, generally believed 
to be operative in effecting organic results, have in 
verity not the least influence upon them. But they 
yield our most instructive knowledge. Physics and 
biology are entirely made up of such perceptual ex- 
perience. And what would we really and positively 
know about the world and our own organic being with- 
out such sense-stimulated revelation ? 

Clearly, to recognize that all effective work in nature 
is wrought in the realm of extra-conscious existence, 
and that all conscious phenomena, which appear as 
perceptual and other modes of awareness, do nowise 
themselves enter into the effective or creative nexus, 
but are merely reliable signs signalizing what is extra- 
consciously occurring, and what has been formerly 
experienced in relation to it; clearly, to recognize this 



15 2 Philosophical Survey 

fundamental truth is, it need hardly be said, of utmost 
importance to a correct scientific and philosophic 
explanation of what really constitutes nature and our 
own relation to it. 

There is, then, concerning that which is consciously 
revealed as nature, what may be called an outer view, 
the onlooker's view; and also what may be called an 
inner view, the observed subject's own conscious 
content. The observed subject shares, as forming 
part of his own conscious content, the outer view with 
all other onlookers. This outer view shared in com- 
mon consists directly of sense -stimulated perceptual 
experience, and indirectly of its remembered represen- 
tation. The inner view, consisting of the percipient's 
own entire conscious content, is his exclusive property 
shared by no outsider. And the conscious contents of 
the many outsiders, whose perceptual modes reveal 
the presence and characteristics of one and the same 
observed subject, and of one and the same extra- 
conscious macrocosm, are likewise their own exclusive 
property unshared by other percipients. 

There is, thus, nothing consciously present in exist- 
ence, save only the outer and inner view of natural 
occurrences, inferred to constitute the conscious con- 
tent of beings which are percipient and perceptible. 
As regards experience or knowledge it is clear that it 
can be derived solely from these two distinct sources. 
Outer or perceptual experience reveals directly to all 
normally constituted percipients one and the same 
perceptible, extra -conscious nature. And this is what 
is called the physical aspect. Inner or introspective 
experience, leaving out of consideration its significance 
in relation to outside perceptible nature, reveals 
directly only what is exclusively taking place in the 



Naturalistic Implications 153 

in trospec tor's own being. It is this intimate experi- 
ence, consisting of a complex of affective, conative, and 
cognitive modes of awareness, that cannot be percep- 
tually shared by outsiders. Outsiders, on the other 
hand, can gain perceptual experience of the extra - 
conscious processes occurring within the perceptible 
subject, the very processes which give rise to his inner, 
unshareable awareness. Of these organic processes 
the observed subject is himself directly unconscious. 
But it is only by means of the observer's perceptual 
experience of them that is acquired the scientific 
knowledge, regarding the organization and the vital 
processes which underlie the phenomenal play of con- 
sciousness. This most important knowledge is, how- 
ever, revealed only in the symbolical terms of the 
percipient's own perceptual awareness, mostly in the 
medium of mere visual phenomena. 

Without the outer view, containing the revelation 
of a perceptible, extra-conscious realm of existence, 
peopled by extra-conscious existents or entities, there 
would be nothing extant in awareness but a single 
solipsistic conscious content, miraculously arising out 
of vacancy and relapsing into it, signalizing nothing 
beyond itself, being, in fact, utterly meaningless. 
Hence the impossibility of a purely phenomenalistic 
psychology which disregards the extra-conscious 
significance of the conscious states. A perceptual 
brain would then be nothing but a meaningless com- 
plex of transient visual and tactual forms; and just as 
meaningless would be all the other constituents of the 
conscious content. Love and fear would, then, not 
be the love and fear of something or of some one; but 
would be a mere phenomenal affection, inhering in 
nothing, felt by nobody, and referring to nothing; of 



154 Philosophical Survey 

course an impossible state of things. And, in fact, the 
entire feeling, perceiving, thinking, and willing human 
being is always presupposed in such idealistic flights 
of fancy. 

The principal difficulty encountered in disentang- 
ling the factors that enter into the constitution of the 
conscious content, and impart to it its significance, 
lies in the fact that the conscious individual contains 
and realizes within himself the two entirely different 
modes of awareness, the inner mode unshareable by 
outsiders, and the outer mode shared equally by out- 
siders. This outer mode of awareness becomes in the 
conscious individual inextricably blended with the 
inner mode, as integrant part of his fund of memorized 
experience. It, however, never ceases to refer to the 
perceptible world equally realized by outsiders. The' 
outer or physical experience, directly verifiable by all 
percipients and consisting of compelled, specifically 
stimulated percepts, can be practically isolated and 
examined as immediately given in perception. The 
inner or psychical experience, on the other hand, can 
nowise divest itself of the acquired physical experi- 
ence in introspective examination and contemplation. 
These distinctions here pointed out are not merely 
hypothetical. They are positively corroborated by 
cerebral histology, physiology, and pathology. For 
there are discovered in the cerebral hemispheres sepa- 
rate seats, whence respectively emanate these different 
kinds of conscious awareness, and also the structural 
connections between them; between, for instance, the 
seat of the inner, organic awareness of our own body, 
and the centers of outer perceptual awareness. 

It is, then, the perceptually revealed organism that 
as a living, relatively permanent, extra-conscious, 



Naturalistic Implications 155 

power-endowed being, feels, craves, desires, per- 
ceives, thinks, and wills, and this always in relation to 
a world of outside existents perceptually revealed. The 
organically ingrained nature of this being is instinct 
with self-preserving solicitude amid a complex of 
surroundings, advantageous and disadvantageous to 
itself; instinct at times with the insistent impulsion 
towards propagation, which leads to the preservation 
of the race, and which finds preconcerted satisfaction 
in complemental union with a kindred mate, and 
eventually, moreover, in the tender, altruistic rearing 
of offspring; a being whose life is sustained by the 
breathing of outside air and the eating of outside food ; 
a being that fears danger from outside intrusion, and 
enjoys fruition of its needs from what is derived from 
outside sources ; whose anger is aroused by the enmity 
of other beings, and his affections by their friendliness ; 
whose manifold emotions are normally awakened by 
the sight or thought of whatever the outer world has 
in store as means of appealing to his likes and dislikes ; 
and whose religious, social, artistic, and ethical aspira- 
tions all find their objective aims and fulfillment 
in formations fashioned in accordance with perceptual 
experience. Physically and psychically the living 
being is out and out organized in relation to specific 
agencies of a world outside himself; and his life is 
unremittingly sustained and carried on solely through 
interaction with these external agencies. 

Now, it is no other than this same impassioned 
being, endowed with a phyletically derived store of 
vital potencies, all applying to the sense-revealed 
world, and vivified through ceaseless interaction with 
it; it is this same eminently efficient being, aimfully 
organized in relation to its medium, that idealistic 



15 6 Philosophical Survey 

speculation declares, either to consist of nothing but 
modes of conscious awareness, or to be a mere con- 
flux of inadequate ideas pointing as their real source 
to a supreme, all-sufficient consciousness. 

To such extremes of vapid, anti-natural conception 
has philosophical thought been driven by relying 
exclusively in its reasoning on immediately given but 
utterly forceless and evanescent conscious data; re- 
gardless of their sane, common-sense implications, 
and their substantial biological foundation. 



VIII. BIOLOGICAL FACTS UNDERLYING 
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS 

To give an intelligible account how the present 
writer has arrived at the biologico-philosophical views 
expressed in this treatise, a brief summary of the 
steps which have led to them may perhaps be par- 
doned. More than forty years ago, while acting as 
pathologist at St. Thomas's Hospital in London, ex- 
amining microscopically numerous cancerous tumors 
and other morbid growths, I became convinced of 
the fallacy of the cell-theory. Moreover, pus- 
corpuscles, believed at that time to be cells in the 
act of proliferation on account of their seemingly 
dividing nuclei, I found to be a product of decay and 
not of growth. In experimenting with the remark- 
able formative substance known as myeline I suc- 
ceeded in artificially imitating most forms of cells and 
nuclei, and with the help of other observations 1 
showed that cell-like bodies may form in great num- 
bers without being derived from an original mother- 
cell. All this tended to prove that the cellular form, 
accepted as being of specific importance, was not really 
of essential significance. The dictum, " Omnis cellula 
e cellula" and the typical cell-form as a separate unit 
in the construction of animal bodies, became to me 
biological dogmas of problematical validity. The 
principal results of these investigations were gathered 
together in a paper read before the Royal Society in 
1866, and separately published in a pamphlet under 
the title, "On the Formation of So-called Cells in 
Animal Bodies," 1867. 

"57 



i5 8 Philosophical Survey 

Becoming involved in an extensive medical practice, 
I found time in the next years only to investigate 
the activity of living muscular fibers. The view of 
R. J. Mayer, that a muscular fiber is merely a piece of 
stable machinery actuated by heat power derived 
from the combustion of food particles was then gen- 
erally accepted. The examination of living muscular 
fibers of insects, and especially those of grasshoppers, 
proved to me that the working power of muscles is 
inherent in their own protoplasm, and that their 
activity is due to vital changes in the muscular sub- 
stance as such, and not to any mechanical heat-engine 
sort of actuation. The contemplation of this direct 
observation caused me to doubt the validity of the 
mechanical theory of vital processes, and analogically 
also the entire mechanical theory of natural occurrences. 
For what is perceived as matter, and mostly held by 
scientists to be composed of inert and qualitatively 
undistinguished atoms, was clearly, as here evidenced, 
consisting of force-endowed substance of a qualita- 
tive or specific nature. A brief account of this inves- 
tigation was published in " Centralblatt f. d. med. 
Wissensch, 1870." Henceforth, vitality as a property 
inherent in the living substance became to me the 
fundamental problem of biology, whose solution would 
probably also afford a clew to unsolved philosophical 
problems. But the philosophical truth which I had 
previously recognized; the truth, namely, that what 
we are actually aware of forms altogether part of our 
own individual consciousness ; this inevasible truth ren- 
dered the ascertained biological facts, as applying to 
real existents outside individual consciousness, of un- 
certain reliability, and kept me puzzled. 

My attention was early given to philosophical 



Biological Facts 159 

problems. In my student days at Heidelberg I had 
enjoyed personal intercourse with prominent phi- 
losophers of opposite schools, transcendentalist and 
materialistic. Like other medical students of my 
acquaintance I was then rather inclined to accept 
a materialistic interpretation ; although aware of the 
difficulty to understand how psychical phenomena 
can possibly result from material and mechanical 
causation. Later in Bonn, while attending the lec- 
tures of Helmholtz on the physiology of the senses, the 
epistemological problem of the relation of body and 
mind became impressed upon me as indispensably 
connected with a true understanding of vital processes. 
These sundry biological and philosophical doubts and 
puzzles accompanied me on my further course. 

Years after, when I retired from medical practice 
to devote myself entirely to the elucidation of these 
great problems, I first sought to gain firm ground with 
regard to the epistemological problem. In 1871 I 
published in book form in German a " Refutation of 
the Kantian Theory of Knowledge from the Empirical 
Standpoint," whose subtitle, "A Preliminary Contri- 
bution towards the Establishment of a Physiological 
Conception of Nature," clearly indicated the inception 
of the views advocated in this treatise. I had arrived 
at the conviction that the perceiving and thinking 
individual being obviously organized through and 
through in interrelation with a given environment, a 
correct understanding of his vital organization would 
be sure to throw light on the scientific bearings of 
natural phenomena in general and of philosophical 
problems in particular. Many years were now given 
to a close study of the vital properties of protoplasm, 
that wonderful living substance which composes all 



160 Philosophical Survey 

organic beings, and is the veritable life-bearer. I 
selected, as the most appropriate objects of research, 
primitive forms of life, in which the vital movement 
and the entire cycle of interdependent vital activities 
are transparently visible, and can thus in their totality 
be directly observed. Only when after years of in- 
vestigation I had arrived at an amply verified con- 
ception of vitality and organization did I venture to 
publish results in English and German periodicals. The 
earliest paper appeared, 1878, in ''The Popular Science 
Monthly" under the title "Monera and the Problem 
of Life" ; the latest after twenty-seven years of further 
research and study under the title, "The Vitality and 
Organization of Protoplasm," 1905. Reference to a 
number of intervening papers is given in other sections 
of this treatise. 

On the strength of my direct observations I claim 
to have positively ascertained that the living sub- 
stance or protoplasm owes its vitality, or its being 
alive, to a process of interaction functionally carried on 
between itself and its environment at the surface of 
contact; that this process consists demonstrably in 
functional disintegration induced from without fol- 
lowed by functional reintegration from within, by 
force of which the living substance forms an integrant 
whole composing the entire organism. It is nowise, 
as generally asserted, made up of an aggregation of 
separate autonomous units of any kind. And this 
same vital process of disintegration and reintegration 
necessarily and observably draws with it the other 
essential functions of vitality ; namely, nutrition, sub- 
serving the reintegration of the living substance by 
supplying it with complemental material, and depura- 
tion, whose function is to eliminate the effete products 



Biological Facts 161 

of disintegration and the unassimilable residue of 
nutritive material. These three essential functional 
operations, at work throughout the entire scale of 
animal beings, form the definite cycle of interdepen- 
dent activities that constitute the principal functional 
and structural subdivisions of the organic whole. 

Under this conception of the unity of the organic 
individual, founded on direct unmistakable observa- 
tions, aggregational theories of autonomous or sepa- 
rate units as constituent elements of the organic being, 
advanced by leading biologists, proved on close scru- 
tiny altogether untenable. Vitality and organization 
are clearly the perceptible expression of a definite 
cycle of interdependent activities taking place within 
one and the same indiscerptible substantial entity, 
rightly deserving the name of " living substance," 
which signifies that what is called "life" is its own 
intrinsic property, and not any extraneous principle 
mysteriously superadded. The assumption of auton- 
omous cells as aggregated constituent elements of 
the out and out organized unitary individual, and of 
the composition of such autonomous cells by a further 
aggregation of secondary units, such as Darwin's 
gemmules, Haeckel's plastidules, Weismann's bio- 
phores, De Vries's pangenes, and a number of other 
purely hypothetical elements; this assumption gives 
rise to painfully labored, illogical theories of vitality 
and organization, wherein the imagined imperceptible 
units are, to begin with, arbitrarily endowed with all 
the properties they are invented to explain. I have 
erpeatedly shown the utter insufficiency of such 
aggregational theories. 

The recognition of the true nature of what is per- 
ceived as the vitality of the functional! v and structur- 



1 62 Philosophical Survey 

ally unitary organic individual, which individual forms 
by force of its maintained reintegration to full effi- 
ciency the only veritable substantial entity known in 
nature, remaining, as it does, integrantly and effi- 
ciently intact, despite the constant changes it under- 
goes; this most essential recognition of the actual, 
nature of vitality furnishes the clew to the interpreta- 
tion of the complex organization and functional co- 
operation of the sundry parts and organs of higher 
forms of life. And it yields also a clew to the solution 
of hitherto insoluble scientific and philosophical 
problems, of which that of substantiality as something 
identically enduring, while nevertheless the source of 
changeful phenomena, has played by far the most 
important part in attempts at interpreting natural 
phenomena. 

But although the perceptible phenomena manifest 
to all observers directly and clearly the dependence of 
the vitality and organization of living beings upon 
interaction with their outside environment, and al- 
though their visible constitution, and their own per- 
ceptual awareness, have no significance except in 
relation to modes of such interaction, still the irrever- 
sible truth remains that everything consciously real- 
ized, which includes everything we are at all aware of, 
consists exclusively of mere modes of such conscious 
awareness. We are obviously actually aware only of 
what at present forms part of our individual con- 
scious content; all the rest is inference from the data 
thus consciously given . Such solipsistic conscious data , 
themselves eminently fleeting and forceless, make, 
however, no sense of their own, and are incapable of 
composing anything enduring and coherent, unless 
reference be made to a realm of implicated abiding, 



Biological Facts 163 

extra-conscious, power-endowed existents. The real 
existence of such is anyhow taken for granted by 
common sense, and in practical life, notwithstanding 
that this existential belief is in verity grounded on 
mere phenomenal perceptual appearances. Hence the 
necessity of a valid theory of knowledge which justi- 
fies the inference that our individual perceptual 
awareness truly signalizes the real presence and char- 
acteristics of an extra-conscious world perceptible 
to all percipient beings. 

Solipsism, which abstains from referring to anything 
beyond its own conscious content, consistently leads 
to mere phantasmagorical Nihilism, with negation of 
the existence of the conscious individual as a real 
identically abiding entity, and all the more with nega- 
tion of the real existence of all other living beings and 
perceptible things outside the purely phenomenal and 
ever-lapsing solipsistic conscious content. A genuine 
solipsistic interpretation of natural occurrences is, 
however, an impossibility, and all attempts at it 
have signally failed. Reliance on something endur- 
ing, and if it were merely reliance on an enduring 
memory of what from moment to moment is flowing 
out of awareness, is evidently indispensable to any 
apprehension and interpretation of what is actually 
experienced. For this reason, and for the further 
reason that a number of prominent investigators 
are attempting not only to interpret perceptible phe- 
nomena exclusively in terms of their appearance in 
perceptual awareness, but take also the fleeting and 
forceless sensorial elements of such awareness to be 
the veritable material out of which the real world is 
constructed; for these reasons, and in order legiti- 
mately to transcend solipsistic: consciousness, I had 



164 Philosophical Survey 

to devote much space in an attempt to render certain 
the real existence of a perceptible world subsisting 
independently of being perceived, a world of extra- 
conscious, transphenomenal, sense-affecting existents, 
denied by pure Idealism of all description. The pur- 
suit of natural science without the certainty that the 
objects of investigation exist independently of the in- 
vestigator's own casual perceptual awareness of them 
would be an altogether idle, wasted, unprofitable occu- 
pation, which most evidently proves not to be the case. 
Having felt compelled, on the strength of direct 
observations, to renounce the cell-theory, and the 
purely mechanical interpretation of natural phenom- 
ena, and having been furthermore compelled, on the 
strength of reasoning based on these observations, to 
renounce philosophical Materialism as well as philo- 
sophical Idealism; and having been led to adopt in- 
stead a unitary view of the living substance, as being 
itself a source of intrinsic, forceful modes of activity, 
and to philosophically insist on the real existence of 
an extra-conscious realm of power-endowed existents 
signalized by perceptual modes of awareness; I found 
myself twenty-five years ago on all sides in opposition 
to prevailing ways of scientific interpretation. Little 
wonder then that small attention was paid to such 
heterodox opinions. However, some leading botan- 
ists have on independent lines of research become since 
likewise aware of the fallacy of the theory of cell- 
aggregation, and recently experimental ontogenesis 
has positively demonstrated that the germ-cell cannot 
be regarded, in keeping with the tenets of the cell- 
theory, as a mother-cell, whose progeny consists of a 
series of autonomous daughter-cells; but that all its 
successive divisions form, on the contrary, comple- 



Biological Facts 165 

mental parts of a predetermined whole to be developed 
thereby. As regards the materialistic and purely 
mechanical interpretation of natural phenomena, prin- 
cipally the views persistently advocated by Ernst 
Mach have succeeded in convincing many physicists 
of the existence of modes of energy that are not essen- 
tially of a mechanical nature, and also that perceptible 
objects are not made up of inert material particles. 
Quite recently the discovery of radio-activity, ema- 
nating from certain perceptible bodies, completely 
upsets the mechanical theory, which takes bodies to 
consist of inert material atoms actuated ab extra by 
imparted motion or energy. 

These recent biological and physical discoveries 
corroborate essentially the views I have so long ad- 
vocated and defended in a number of English and 
German publications, and which are found again reiter- 
ated in the present treatise. I am nowise anxious to 
claim personal credit or acknowledged priority for 
them. But having devoted a lifetime to disinterested 
research and study, I rejoice to find — what I, how- 
ever, never doubted would eventually occur — that 
weighty conclusions at which I arrived, contrary to 
accepted views, have now also been reached in inde- 
pendent ways, which goes far to prove their correct- 
ness in the present state of scientific knowledge. This 
opens a reasonable prospect that other connected con- 
clusions advanced by me will prove before long also 
to He in the path of scientific progress. 

The recognition of another fact regarding the per- 
ceptible constitution of the living substance plays also 
a highly important part in the correct understanding 
of its intrinsic nature and its functional relations to 
its environment. The living substance, as I have 



i66 Philosophical Survey 

clearly demonstrated, assumes, in consequence of its 
reaction against the disintegrating influences of the 
medium, a bipolar and bilateral shape. In its primi- 
tive forms it possesses already what may rightly be 
called an oral and an aboral pole, and also axial symme- 
tries of form. How this comes about in connection 
with the vital movement has been explained in my 
biological papers. The entire vital labor of the living 
substance culminates in the formation of its oral or 
rather its cephalic pole. In this region its chemical 
structure is of a higher order than at other parts of the 
body, and it is with the cephalic pole foremost that 
it moves along through space and meets the brunt of 
the stimulating influences of the medium. Here in 
interaction with sundry specific kinds of stimulating 
influences organs of sense, specifically attuned to them, 
are found to be gradually elaborated, whereby pro- 
gressively heightened head-dominion with its increasing 
sensorial awareness is established in furtherance of 
the individual's life of outside relations. The next 
highest part of the living substance in chemical organi- 
zation and eventual structural elaboration is its 
general surface of contact with the medium. It is 
there that the fundamental sense of touch becomes 
functionally and organically developed into differen- 
tiated structural areas. 

All these sensory organs, delicately attuned to modes 
of external stimulation, are contiguously connected 
with motor organs consisting of contractile substance, 
which has come to be a specifically differentiated part 
of the common living substance. The stimuli im- 
pinging on the sensory surface set going a train of 
functional disintegration, whose general effect is phys- 
iologically regarded as "irritability," and which in its 



Biological Facts 167 

motor outcomes becomes greatly magnified on reach- 
ing the muscular substance, causing its more or less 
extensive and intensive contraction. The muscular 
substance with its structural arrangements and its 
modes of contraction having been organically devel- 
oped in connection with the living being's interaction 
with the medium, executes the definite motor responses 
to the sensory incitements. The organic elaboration 
of the sensory organs and their neural extensions and 
combinations entail a corresponding elaboration of the 
motor apparatus through which it appropriately re- 
sponds to the complex sensory stimulation. 

The progressive organization of the living substance 
in interaction with the medium accrues to it from within 
as a developmental acquisition in furtherance of its 
life of outside relations. The most essential vital 
potency in living beings, and that which constitutes 
them the only veritable substantial existents in nature, 
is their power to structurally and functionally reinte- 
grate themselves on suffering disintegration from with- 
out. Physiologically viewed, life consists essentially 
in the functional stir set going by external stimulation, 
entailing structural disintegration, and the following 
restoration to complete integrity through assimilation 
of complemental nutritive material. The minutely 
differentiated stimulating influences incite specific 
modes of disintegration on impingement. The living 
substance, responding by definite modes of reintegra- 
tion, may be reasonably inferred to gain thereby more 
and more complete attunement to the diverse inciting 
influences at the points of contact most sensitive to 
them. As a result of such gradually and toilsomely 
attained specification, development of the entire living 
being would seem to be a necessary eonsequence, its 



1 68 Philosophical Survey 

substance being throughout affected thereby. The 
advantage gained by such organic elaboration, result- 
ing in attunement to specific stimulating influences, 
becomes evinced in a more and more distinct and com- 
prehensive sentient information, and more and more 
appropriate motor reactions in connection with the life 
of outside relations. In organic beings all structural 
and all sentient development is instrumental to the 
life of outside relations. Its special organs form what 
is called the ectoderm of the animal organism, which 
being constitutionally bilateral causes the ectodermic 
organs to be developed in symmetrical pairs. This is 
not generally the case with the entodermic organs. 

Higher animal organisms, although they are essen- 
tially integrant units, nevertheless consist of a number 
of more or less intimately blended zooids, somatic sec- 
tions, or metameres. From the comparative study of 
lower forms of life, the association of the more or less 
independent metameres entering into the constitution 
of organic beings, may be regarded as originally due 
to arrested fissiparous division of entire animal indi- 
viduals, which have become fused together into a com- 
plex unitary organism with head-dominion. Various 
stages of such fusion are met with, especially in worms. 
But howsoever intimately fused into a single unitary 
organism, each metamere constitutionally retains some 
degree of independence as regards its sensori-motor 
organization and function. This state of things gives 
rise to reflex actions that may take place indepen- 
dently of head -dominion ; but which may also be stimu- 
lated to activity by influences originating in the head 
region, and involving coordinate action of a number 
of metameres. Each metamere is itself bilaterally 
divided, each half having its own sensori-motor organ- 



Biological Facts 169 

ization, but also more or less intimately fused into 
unity. 

In higher animals the sundry sensori -motor con- 
nections and further complex communications are 
established by a system of neural filaments, which at 
intermodes blend into more highly organized structures, 
embodying on the sensorial side their conjoint sensorial 
import, and on the motor side their conjoint motor 
efficiencies. With the development of each organ of 
sense in the cephalic region is concomitantly developed 
a sensori-motor organization of its own, which grows 
more and more complex and minutely specialized in 
keeping with the developing complexity of the sensory 
organ itself. In the course of phyletic elaboration the 
neural constituents of the different sensory organs blend 
more or less intimately, forming thereby synthetical 
neural structures, embodying their combined sensori- 
motor import. That which is perceptually revealed 
as sensory organs with their neural belongings are 
rightly inferred to be of a specifically sentient nature. 1 
Normal, and even abnormal, stimuli elicit a specific 
kind of sensation or mode of responsive awareness. 
Neural substance has become here specifically attuned 
to specific modes of stimulation, and responds to them 
sentiently in specific ways. Its visual response is spe- 
cifically different from its auditory or from its olfac- 
tory response. 

The differentiating and specializing process works 
its organizing elaboration from the surface of contact 
with the medium, which it minutely subdivides into 
areas or points attuned to specific stimuli, whence it 
becomes propagated through neural substance towards 

1 Sec "The dependence of quality on specific energies." "Mind. " 
January, 1880. 



170 Philosophical Survey 

the central or culminating region of the living sub- 
stance or organism, where all the separately converging 
specifically elaborated neural elements blend into higher 
structures. The neural filaments do not run a sepa- 
rate, isolated course from sensory periphery to motor 
periphery. Nerves are not merely fasciculi of fila- 
ments ending each into a separate fiber of a definite 
muscle. The definite, diversely specific filaments or 
protoplasmic tendrils on reaching together central 
regions continue conjointly the elaborating or devel- 
oping process by means of their functional activity, 
which process results in the organization of the central 
living substance into a synthetic embodiment of their 
conjoint structural and functional import, and the 
fixation of newly accruing sensorial experience. It is 
of paramount importance to recognize that all struc- 
tural and functional elaboration and complication 
accrues to the one indiscerptible individual within his 
own living being, as developmental differentiations 
and specializations of its original morphologically uni- 
form substance, endowed with primitive self -feeling 
and self -motility. The prevalent biological and phi- 
losophical view, that separate sensorial and motor 
elements are in the course of organic and sentient 
development mosaic -like pieced together, so as to form 
differently grouped arrangements, is an out and out 
mistaken interpretation. All microscopically detect- 
able structural elements have become differentiated 
and specialized within the unitary living substance as 
integrant belongings of one and the same organic 
being, to whom they furnish sentient information, and 
whom they equip with motor abilities. These latter 
statements are inferences, not from directly observed 
processes, but from comparative anatomy and physi- 
ology, and from general biological principles. 



Biological Facts 171 

Life, then, generally held to be some separate, 
power-endowed entity, actuating from without the 
organism, which is conceived thereby as a mechanical 
contrivance, or held sometimes to be attached to 
elementary units, such as gemmules or biopheres 
which are believed to compose the organism; or again 
to be the property of some special chemical compound ; 
"life," vitality, or being alive, is in verity essentially 
the result from moment to moment of what is scien- 
tifically ascertained to be a definite cycle of chemical 
activity. It is this round of chemical activity which 
constitutes exclusively the perceptible vital phenomena 
of the living substance. Death consists, therefore, 
nowise in the withdrawal of a surmised separate 
life-principle from the deserted organic mechanism; 
nor does it primarily consist in the decay of organic 
substance. It consists in the arrest of the intrinsic 
activity which constitutes the organism a living 
substance. 



PART II 
BIOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS 



I. INTRODUCTION 

Pure Idealism, be its building material sensations 
or conceptions, can — as has been shown — in no 
legitimate way transcend the content of individual 
consciousness. Its sensations, which are in verity 
eminently transient modes of awareness, can nowise 
be rightly hypostasized into permanency as substan- 
tial elements of world-construction. This is, how- 
ever, what sensationalists and associationists are wont 
to do. As to its concepts, which are really mere empty 
names when bereft of their implied sensorial conno- 
tations, they obviously cannot be rightly postulated 
as emanating source of these same implied experiential 
connotations, of which they are mere collective or 
signalizing modes of apprehension. But this is ex- 
actly the arbitrary device resorted to by conceptual- 
ists and absolutists. 

What consciously appears to each of us in actual 
awareness forms a unitary, though diversified, ideal 
structure, of which all diverse constituents are more or 
less closely and interdependently connected in time 
and space. They can, therefore, not be segregated 
from their contexture as self-subsisting, and thus singly 
hypostasized, without losing their cognitive signifi- 
cance. Moreover, as the content of consciousness 
makes up only each present moment of awareness, 
filling thus successively the flowing instants of time 
with renewed material, it is evidently as phen omen all v 
transient as time itself. Lapsing from moment to 
moment it has, despite all its wealth of awareness, not 

175 



17 6 Biological Solutions 

sufficient coherency and permanency in itself to give 
consistency to any sort of world-fabric, and even if it 
were one as insubstantial as that which phenome- 
nalistic Solipsism offers as true reality. To imagine, — 
as is the way of transcendental Idealists, — summoned 
from out its potential latency, all possible content of 
consciousness fully systematized, and concentrated in 
the one moment of actual awareness, and furthermore 
to transubstantialize such mere fiction of plenary 
phenomenal awareness as real universal Being, or the 
Absolute ; this surely amounts to an exorbitant expan- 
sion and deification of denaturalized thought. 

It is certain that the conscious content of each 
successive moment of time cannot possibly be self -origi- 
nated and self-sustaining, cannot emerge into aware- 
ness out of utter vacancy, but must issue from some 
all-comprising, extra-conscious matrix, bringing thus 
along with it, consciously resuscitated, systematized 
information of past experience. The necessarily im- 
plied permanent, experience-preserving matrix can, 
however, not itself be of ideal consistency ; for all ideal 
modes we are cognizant of are mere transient, insub- 
stantial phenomena. 

The content of individual consciousness, which con- 
stitutes all in all we are in any way actually aware 
of, and which is the only source from which pure 
Idealism or any other philosophy can draw material 
for their world-constructions or world-interpretations, 
proves thus to consist of nothing but lapsing moments 
of awareness, containing only ephemeral ideal phe- 
nomena. Such actual state of things renders clearly 
impossible for pure Idealism of any kind legitimately 
to transcend the utterly secluded sphere of Solipsism ; 
nay to escape complete nihilistic Phenomenalism. For 



Introduction 177 

there is here no permanent substance, no kind of sub- 
stantial Ego or Subject to support and remember the 
fleeting phenomenal panorama. Indeed, the exist- 
ence of real individual beings, or even of a single 
such being, cannot be admitted by consistent idealistic 
thinkers. For they must hold, either that what they 
perceive of other beings and of themselves is nothing 
but a group of sensations; or that these groups of sen- 
sations forming perceptually individualized beings are 
somehow an illusive outcome of conceptual awareness ; 
or that they have their real being in a hypothetically 
assumed universal consciousness. 

Nihilistic Phenomenalism is the consistent outcome 
of pure Solipsism. It is, however, too fanciful a posi- 
tion to be seriously held. In fact, nothing can be gained 
by it, and no advance in knowledge made from it. 
Where this is attempted, realistic implications are al- 
ways surreptitiously introduced. Fichte, who tried 
to construct the world from the solipsistic standpoint, 
took care to smuggle all possible reality in the premise 
from which he started. For what more can be needed 
than an all-creating Ego, in order to evolve from it 
whatever exists? Still it remains certain that the 
content of individual consciousness is all that is im- 
mediately given and apprehended. So far as we are 
actually conscious of them, other beings form part of 
our own individual solipsistic consciousness. In order to 
impart to the other beings thus perceptually cognized 
an existence not wholly confined to their ideal appear- 
ance in individual consciousness, sundry unwarrantable 
devices have been resorted to. Descartes invoked as 
credential of their extra-conscious self-existence the 
implicit reliability of what is revealed by divine fiat. 
Spinoza declared them to be special modes of the two 



i7 8 Biological Solutions 

attributes of the absolute Substance constituting our 
world. Leibnitz maintained that each windowless 
monad is divinely ordained to cognize, as perception 
of its own, the being of other monads. Malebranche 
believed that other beings are directly perceived as 
subsisting in the divine Substance. Berkeley con- 
cluded that they are made by divine fiat to arise as 
perceptual beings in individual consciousness; and so 
on. In line, as formerly shown, no philosophical sys- 
tem has yet succeeded in scientifically, or in merely 
logically, transcending the rigorous limits of individual 
consciousness and its subjective Idealism. 

It has been here repeatedly maintained that percep- 
tual awareness cannot, as is actually the case in dreams 
and hallucinations, be originated in real experience 
without the direct assistance of sense-stimulation. 
Howsoever richly we may be innately equipped with 
perceptual faculties, it is an undeniable fact that 
persons born blind have no experience of the normal 
content of visual awareness; nor have persons born 
deaf any experience of the normal content of auditory 
awareness. And no one who has studied the desolate 
emptiness of perceptual and therewith of conceptual 
awareness of deaf and blind persons, and has followed 
their gradual conceptual enlightenment by means of 
systematic education through the sense of touch; no 
one who has given proper attention to this experiment 
naturally afforded to psychologists, can hesitate for a 
moment to acknowledge the experiential sensorial ori- 
gin of vividly definite percepts, and the utter depen- 
dence of conceptual knowledge upon the same. 
Without actual sense-stimulated experience thinking 
remains a sterile faculty. 

Here Kant was certainly right when he emphatically 



Introduction 179 

asserted that conceptual forms are empty and impotent 
when not furnished with sensorial material to which 
they can be applied. And who in his sober senses 
really doubts that this sensorial material is forcibly 
aroused in us by outside influences, however difficult 
it may be scientifically to prove the independent exist- 
ence of these sense-affecting influences, and to form a 
conception of their intimate nature ? 

The epistemological and scientific justification for 
transcending pure Solipsism has been attempted in a 
previous section. There, among other weighty consid- 
erations, it was shown that if we and other beings were 
really of purely ideal consistency, we would then be 
as imperceptible to one another as the windowless 
monads of Leibnitz are held to be. For nothing ideal 
or psychical is at all perceptible to any outside being. 
Now, as we actually and most distinctly perceive one 
another, that which is thus perceptible must neces- 
sarily consist of something differing altogether from 
what we have experience of as being of ideal consis- 
tency. This perceptible part of other beings is what 
we call their body, and if it belongs to living beings 
also their organism. 

That which to ourselves and other percipients be- 
comes thus perceptually revealed as the body or organ- 
ism proves, on the strength of multifold scientific 
experience, to be our real being, containing the rela- 
tively permanent matrix and source of our transitory 
but ever-renewed all-revealing conscious content. 
It is no wonder, then, that the study of the vitality 
and organization of this perceptible, consciousness- 
emitting body, yields well-grounded solutions of some 
of the most enigmatic problems of philosophy, pro- 
blems impenetrable to mere conceptual probing. 



II. SUBSTANTIALITY 

In a former section the problem of substantiality 
was emphatically declared to be the perennial puzzle 
and Gordian knot of philosophical interpretation. 
Students of philosophy will agree with Leibnitz when 
he asserts that "a correct view of substance is the key 
to philosophy." They will also agree with Kant who 
declares "substantiality to be the supreme and first 
principle of nature, which alone secures unity of ex- 
perience. For without something permanently abid- 
ing amid the flux of temporal changes there could be 
no synthetical connection and apprehension of natural 
phenomena." 

This being undoubtedly the case, where, then, is this 
necessarily implied substance to be found that per- 
manently and identically underlies the perpetual flux 
of phenomenal appearances ? 

Search after the permanently real which remains 
one and the same identical substance while neverthe- 
less undergoing or displaying manifold changes; this 
search after permanency amid change may well be 
considered the supreme endeavor of philosophical 
contemplation. How, in truth, can something itself 
unchangeable be the ground of that which is chang- 
ing? This fundamental, unyielding difficulty encoun- 
tered in all attempts at solution of the problem of sub- 
stantiality proves to be at the bottom of almost all 
other difficulties met with in the philosophical inter- 
pretation of nature. How, indeed, can change pro- 
ceed from something unchangeable? Or how can 

180 



Substantiality 181 

something manifest perceptible changes and yet re- 
main itself unchangeably identical' An unchange- 
ably identical entity can nowise participate in the 
mutations of that which appears in time. Being itself 
changeless and timeless it can neither produce nor 
emanate nor manifest anything that has its existence 
in time. And without time mutations nothing in 
nature would ever occur or proceed. There would be 
no becoming in this world, only eternally one and the 
same undifferentiated, immutable being or substance. 
Such an antithetical feat as the combination of 
identity and change, though regarded as having 
necessarily to be realized in that which constitutes 
substantiality; such a cooperation of outright con- 
tradictory attributes is logically inconceivable, and 
therewith conceptually unintelligible. The principle of 
contradiction is a fundamental axiom of logic, and yet 
this very combination of the contrary properties of 
permanency and change, as necessarily attributed in 
reasoning to one and the same subject or substance, 
forms the groundwork of all consistent thinking, and 
of all practical reliance on steadfastness and identity in 
our world. 

Logical thought in its impotence to conceive sub- 
stantiality as simultaneously possessing these anti- 
thetical properties of identity and change, and yet 
compelled to receive its own validity from this very 
assumption, reveals its utter dependence on something 
vastly more steadfast and profound than its own 
vaunted self-sufficiency. Logical thought proves on 
this account to be grounded in the extra -consciously 
sustained identity of the subject of its predications. 
Extra-consciously sustained tins identity of the logi- 
cal subject must be; for consciously appearing in sue- 



1 82 Biological Solutions 

cessive moments of time its sense-apparent or thought- 
conceived permanency and identity can in reality be 
due only to an identical activity taking place in extra- 
conscious latency. 

The more we get to know of the phenomena of 
nature, allowing such phenomena to have existence 
independently of being perceived, the more we become 
convinced that nothing really permanent and identi- 
cally abiding is anywhere in its sphere to be detected. 
Within ourselves the elements that compose our body 
are found to be subject to constant substitution. And 
our entire conscious content of the present moment of 
time, in which all we have of conscious experience rises 
into actual awareness, is with time itself in constant 
flux. It is clear, therefore, that the content of a fol- 
lowing moment can nowise be the same identical 
entity as a whole, or in any of its parts, which existed 
the moment before. Yet, unless certain conscious 
states are nevertheless conceived as having perma- 
nency or as representing somehow existents identically 
abiding, they could not serve as persistent subjects of 
which something can be predicated, and consistent 
thinking would then be impossible. If Socrates is 
not conceived to be an identical subject persisting as 
such in successive moments of time, nothing could be 
predicated of him. Yet all that was actually per- 
ceived of Socrates consisted of nothing but transitory 
modes of awareness. 

Logical thinking is thus forced to assume the per- 
during identity of the constituent of consciousness 
which it posits as subject of its judgments; while in 
verity this same constituent of consciousness is as 
such existentially changing from moment to moment. 
Reliance on the enduring, extra-conscious identity of 



Substantiality 183 

the subject of which something is to be predicated 
forms the groundwork of all logical thinking. This 
proves that the predications or judgments of logical 
thinking refer in reality to modes of existence which 
have their permanent being beyond the sphere of 
conscious awareness. 

In practical life, without this same reliance on the 
identical steadfastness of objects perceptually re- 
vealed in successive moments of awareness, rational 
conduct could not be carried on. Yet how can any- 
thing within the conscious content of a following 
moment of awareness bring with it the assurance of 
the identity of anything revealed in previous moments ? 
This is the great puzzle offered for solution in the 
problem of substantiality. And it is certain that no 
purely idealistic philosophy can possibly solve it. 
For, as that which constitutes ideal existence, all 
feelings, sensations, perceptions, emotions, thoughts, 
and intentions, are mere evanescent modes of aware- 
ness, it cannot be too often insisted upon that pure 
Idealism of whatever kind involves necessarily Non- 
substantialism or nihilistic Phenomenalism. 

When a bird flies across our field of vision and we 
judge it to be red or blue, we do not mean to predicate 
this special attribute of the transient perceptual bird 
we are momentarily aware of. We confidently pred- 
icate it of a relatively permanent entity, which wc 
unhesitatingly take to exist independently of our per- 
ception of it. The perceptual bird that formed part 
of our conscious content has altogether vanished, and 
was itself nothing but a "moving picture" due to a 
great number of retinal moment-photographs and cor- 
responding conscious states, none of which possessed 
the stability to serve as a substantive subject of which 



184 Biological Solutions 

something could be predicated as the attribute of a 
perduring being. Without the instinctive inference 
and its practical verification, that we are predicating 
attributes, not of transient conscious states, but of 
permanent subjects that exist independently of our 
becoming casually aware of them ; without this reliance 
on the extra-conscious stability of consciously repre- 
sented existents, the consistency and rationality of 
our percepts and concepts of things and their rela- 
tions would dissolve into a meaningless chaos of in- 
coherent fleeting phenomena, as is actually the case 
in maniacal raving. 

Now, as all actual awareness consists of a mere suc- 
cession of conscious flashes, how does it happen that 
such a mere flux of dwindling phenomena becomes 
nevertheless synthetized into rationally consistent, 
identically abiding percepts and concepts represent- 
ing a cosmos of more or less enduring existents ? This 
is evidently essentially the same problem which Kant 
vainly sought to solve. How are synthetical proposi- 
tions yielding generally valid knowledge at all possible, 
when our entire actual experience consists of nothing 
but the flowing content of ever-lapsing time? This 
problem of identity amid change, of substantial exist- 
ence sustaining the phenomenal play of conscious 
awareness; this central problem of philosophy, quite 
impenetrable to logical thinking and yet underlying it, 
finds its only solution in certain biological processes posi- 
tively ascertained. This is a fact of paramount impor- 
tance, whose truth shall presently be demonstrated. 

But first, as of utmost consequence to a correct 
interpretation of nature, the problem of substantiality 
will justify a more explicit historical elucidation as 
has been offered in the introductory section. 



Substantiality 185 

Heraclitus, finding that all perceptible nature is in 
constant flux, conceived permanency to have its exist- 
ence not in any substantial existent, but in a fated 
rational order maintained in the flow of perceptible 
mutations. He refrained, however, from trying to 
explain how a rational order can be self -fated, and 
how the panorama of fleeting things is really origi- 
nated and actuated. The Eleatics, on the other hand, 
arrived at the conclusion that permanent Being really 
exists as an animated, immutable, and homogeneous 
spatial plenum, and that the sense-apparent changes 
are illusive and unreal. For how, they argued, can 
mutability and manifoldness be conceived as proceed- 
ing from an out and out identical and immutable 
Being? Here we have the logical incompatibility of 
identity and change already recognized. 

But this conception of substantiality as an ever 
identical and immutable One-and-All, however in- 
geniously defended, was too paradoxical to gain many 
adherents. No display of ingenuity can argue away 
the manifest existence o£ manifold changing things. 
In order, then, to harmonize evident change with 
identical permanency, or the sense-apparent becoming 
of things with the abiding subsistence of that which 
underlies all manifoldness and change; in order intel- 
ligibly to combine unity and permanency with mani- 
foldness and change, the one homogeneous, spatially 
extended material substance of the Eleatics was broken 
up into a plurality of permanent and unchangeable 
elements, from whose motions, aggregations, and shift- 
ings into definite spatial arrangements the many diverse 
changing things are then derived. 

There remained unsatisfied, however, the quest after 
that which actuates and directs the motion of the 



1 86 Biological Solutions 

moving elements, coercing them into the definitely 
formed aggregations that constitute the diverse per- 
ceptible things of our ordered universe. For granting 
the material elements to be originally moving, no defi- 
nitely ordered cosmic system could have resulted from 
a mere fortuitous concourse of moving atoms. Anax- 
agoras conceived as the implied directing cause of 
motion a superior, self -moving kind of animated 
matter, which aimfully imparts motion to the other 
elements of the world-material, causing them to 
assume definite configurations. It is still undeniable 
that mere atomic mechanics, resulting in an ordered 
cosmos, presupposes design in the prime mover. To 
such teleologically acting cause of motion or prime 
mover Anaxagoras gave the name of vovs } conceiv- 
ing it as a substantial being, possessing a rational 
nature. Reason was thus identified throughout the 
entire perceptible world with aimfully moving and 
directing force ; and rational conception came there- 
with, in consequence, soon to be deemed superior to 
mere sense-perception. Eventually thought-conception 
gained complete ascendancy over sense-appearance. 
But thought and perception were not yet recognized 
as being of purely ideal nature in contrast to moved 
matter. They were rather conceived as themselves 
an outcome of rationally moved matter. The task 
remained to disentangle conscious perception and con- 
ception from the world formed by moved matter. 

Protagoras seems to have first recognized the mere 
individual and subjective nature of perception. He 
attempted to demonstrate that everything which is 
consciously apprehended consists of perceptions only. 
He lost therewith all realistic bearings, and landed in 
pure Phenomenalism and Skepticism, as must be the 



Substantiality 187 

fate of all extreme Sensationalism. For sense-woven 
perceptions, being mere transient, individual modes 
of awareness, have neither themselves substantial be- 
ing, nor can they represent anything universally valid. 

In opposition to the sensational Nihilism arrived at 
by Protagoras, insistence on universally valid truth as 
norm of the significance of what transiently and sub- 
jectively appears, was taken up by Socrates as his life 
mission. By means of conceptual argumentation he 
disentangled from the chaos of futile sense-apparent 
things and events that which can be consistently attrib- 
uted to such random experience as universally valid 
and true. 

Henceforth universals apprehended by the unifying 
grasp of conceptual thinking became established among 
philosophers as the valid ground and constituting es- 
sence of the diverse, varying manifold of sense. Under 
this view, granting universals to possess existential and 
essential reality or genuine substantiality, it lay in the 
course of logical thinking to construct conceptual phi- 
losophies on the strength of it, which culminated in 
the postulation of a logical Absolute, or universal 
Being, identical with the complete essence and source 
of thought, and therewith of all reality. 

But the interminable contention eventually carried 
on between the Realists and the Nominalists, leading 
on the side of extreme conceptual Realism to the as- 
sumption of an all-comprehending or absolute Being 
or Substance; and on the side of extreme sensational 
Nominalism to nihilistic Phenomenalism; besides many 
intervening views concerning the respective value, 
priority, and consistency of universals and particulars; 
such never-ending, never-settled condition of this fun- 
damental philosophical inquiry, argued about by fore 



t88 Biological Solutions 

most thinkers for more than two thousand years, 
points to the obvious conclusion that the ground of the 
contention must be wrongly taken. 

The obstructions and objections in the way of sub- 
stantializing the conceptual products and the final 
Absolute of logical thinking are manifold and insur- 
mountable. To start with, there are here at once 
encountered the sense -compelling exi stents of the great 
outside w^orld of which all perceptible things form part. 
These vividly manifest existents stubbornly refuse to 
be conjured away by being reduced to mere sense- 
woven percepts of the casual subject who may acci- 
dently become aware of them; and, worse still, to be 
existentially reduced to shadowy ideas of their own 
self, vaguely hovering in the recesses of conceptual 
thought. If, however, contrary to every sane consid- 
eration, the multitude of perceptible existents com- 
posing the universe are held to have their real being 
in the evanescent percepts forming from time to time 
part of the individual conscious content of the subject 
who may just happen to be aware of them; then the 
question arises: how these perceptual particulars can 
possibly retain their special characteristics in the pro- 
cess of being assimilated into conceptual thought, whose 
very nature consists in being purified of sensorial con- 
tent? If sets of sense-derived particulars and their 
mutual relations are thus collectively gathered up and 
conceptually transformed by logical thinking into 
ideas, then these conceptual products of logical think- 
ing can obviously merely vicariously and symbolically 
represent the particulars of sense, and the special agree- 
ments and distinctions they have in common in actual 
awareness. And here it is evident and generally ad- 
mitted that concepts grow more and more attenuated 



Substantiality 189 

and devoid of content in proportion as they become 
more and more comprehensive. They gradually lose 
on their way towards all-comprehension whatever spe- 
cial content conceptual thought attributed to them at 
a lower stage of generalization and abstraction, until 
there remains at last only the empty shadow of uni- 
versal Being. And it is this emptiest of logical crea- 
tions which, as already mentioned, is actually made 
to constitute the All-in-All of absolutist philosophers, 
declared by them to be identical with a mystical 
"Nothing," in which all possible existence is never- 
theless held potentially to abide in undifferentiated 
completeness or perfect totality of Being. 

If, on the other hand, the reverse process of world- 
construction is attempted, the process, namely, of 
making the particulars to be produced, deduced, or in 
any way existentially or phenomenally derived from 
universal Being; then, in order plausibly to accomplish 
this task, individual consciousness, which is our sole 
source of revelation, has in imagination to be unwar- 
rantably transcended and hypostasized in vacancy, 
and then not even as its states are actually experi- 
enced in successive moments of f ragmen tary aware- 
ness, but as they are held to be in totality potentially 
contained in their extra-conscious matrix. It is, how- 
ever, clear and incontestable that conceptual thought 
in order to constitute universals comprising definite 
sets of particulars, together with their agreements and 
differences; that these sets of particulars must first be 
experientially given. And they can be given only in 
individual consciousness. They cannot be percep- 
tually rcalizei] as constituents of a universal conscious- 
ness which is identical with thought, and consequently 
wholly intensive and purified <>( sensorial material. 



i9° Biological Solutions 

Indeed, has ever any kind of Conceptualism, Panlogism, 
or idealistic Substantialism succeeded in really show* 
ing how the vividly compelled, sense-saturated per- 
cepts we are actually aware of can at all be conceptually 
evolved? And, beyond it, how the sense-compelling 
existents of the outside world, necessarily implicated 
in perception, come to be also intrinsically implicated 
in conception ? Sense-revealed living beings are surely 
real existents, and notwithstanding Berkeley's declar- 
ation to the contrary they cannot live on ideal food 
nor breathe ideal air, nor walk on ideal ground. And 
their consciousness deprived of all sense-derived con- 
tent, and of all its reference to extra-conscious exist- 
ents, if it could still subsist as such, would have as its 
sole content only purely intensive modes of awareness, 
devoid of all perceptual information wherewith to 
guide purposive activities, and to satisfy organic crav- 
ings indispensable to life. 

Logical thought implies, no doubt, in its concepts 
more or less distinctly the particulars of which they 
are the universals, may these be considered as referring 
to external existents, or to mere percepts consciously 
representing the same in individual awareness. In 
every instance they can be only universals compre- 
hending groups and relations of particulars that have 
been actually experienced. They could not possibly 
comprehend anything that had never been individually 
experienced as content of time and space. And here 
the mysterious connection obtaining between casual, 
evanescent modes of awareness and the inferred per- 
manent, extra-conscious, all-comprising matrix whence 
they occasionally and fractionally issue; this puzzling 
connection of the content of each successive conscious 
moment with the source from which it all emanates, 



Substantiality 191 

is that which has to be explained in the search after 
true substantiality and identity in thought and being. 
A concept, as extant in immediate awareness, con- 
sists of a mere sign or name. But these conscious 
signs or names carry with them out of the individual 
fund of latent experience into immediate awareness 
more or less amply and distinctly their implied deno- 
tations and connotations. At all events they are 
understood as representing definite complexes of previ- 
ous experience, secured as latent, systematized knowl- 
edge in the extra-conscious depths of the individual 
being, who may thereby become more or less definitely 
aware of such experience. Latent systematized knowl- 
edge, potentially subsisting in the extra-conscious 
matrix of actual awareness, may be rendered more or 
less distinctly conscious, or may be analytically evolved 
with the help of the conscious signs or names volition- 
ally employed in relation to it. These signs or names 
which, as conscious facts, consist of mere apprehended 
words or their equivalents, receive their significance 
by becoming somehow extra-consciously connected in 
a specific manner with definite groups of the latent 
fund of experience which they denote or connote. 
They are, therefore, as physical existents, not mere 
articulated sounds, but are, moreover, effective incite- 
ments that summon into actual conscious manifes- 
tation the latent, potential knowledge which they 
symbolically represent, and with which they have been 
organically connected. But neither in consciousness, 
where they are mere transient constituents of the con- 
tent of occasional awareness; nor in extra-conscious 
latency, where they can be only special links in the 
organized and systematized fund of potential knowl- 
edge; neither in consciousness, nor out of it, can con- 



19 2 Biological Solutions 

cepts or universals or their verbal signs constitute the 
substantial ground which in reality contains the par- 
ticulars which they denote and connote. 

This substantial ground can be found only in the 
common, extra-conscious matrix, whence all constitu- 
ents of the conscious content issue into awareness. 
The extra-conscious matrix of the all-revealing con- 
scious content is, however, obviously an individual 
possession of the conscious subject, and can neither 
as a whole, nor in any of its parts, be legitimately hypos- 
tasized as permanent, universal entity, substance, or 
being. Moreover, individual consciousness, as repeat- 
edly insisted upon, can become aware only of knowl- 
edge previously and gradually acquired. It cannot 
possibly evolve such knowledge without actual sen- 
sorial experience, simply by delving in innate concep- 
tual endowments. Laura Bridgeman, Helen Keller, 
and in fact all sense-deficient persons clearly and con- 
clusively testify to the impotence of thought when 
uninformed by sense. 

The essential question here is: what the knowledge 
we are conscious of in our moments of actual individual 
awareness really signifies ? What is it the knowledge 
of? To what does it cntologically refer? Pure Ideal- 
ism has to maintain that knowledge is the self-knowl- 
edge of the arising modes of awareness, this being the 
cnly actual and immediate experience accruing to 
consciousness. But idealists always surreptitiously in- 
troduce some permanent subject or substance as the 
underlying matrix or source of the conscious emer- 
gence of remembered experience. And as regards the 
objective, universal validity of knowledge, as Kant 
calls it, pure Idealism, in case it is sufficiently unego- 
tistic to admit the existence of a plurality of perceiv- 



Substantiality 193 

ing or at least of thinking beings, can only assert that 
the individual knowledge of these sundry beings hap- 
pens to be in agreement because they are all essentially 
of the same nature, which assertion is indeed perfectly 
true. 

But as knowledge is evidently sense -informed, and 
as the sensorial information is, moreover, sense-com- 
pelled, it follows that one and the same sense-compel- 
ling influences have to be inferred as arousing congru- 
ent perceptual awareness and congruous modes of its 
apprehension in all percipients of essentially the same 
nature. This again involves the conclusion that indi- 
vidual knowledge refers to or is the knowledge of the 
sense-compelling existents that arouse in us definite 
modes of awareness. And among these sense-com- 
pelling existents our own perceptible being or organ- 
ism, and that of other like beings, plays here the most 
important part. Surely, this our own organism, and 
that of other perceptible beings, cannot possibly con- 
sist of mere complexes of ideas as Idealism has consist- 
ently to maintain, if for no other reason, of which there 
are however many, than that ideas are altogether 
imperceptible. 

It is, however, true that the innate potential concep- 
tual and perceptual endowments of our organization 
are so vastly preponderant over incidental modes of 
external incitement, and so harmoniously preestab- 
lished in attunement to the same, that they need only 
be experientially touched off by the stimulating influ- 
ences, in order to fill our moment of awareness with 
a wide range of appropriately awakened cognitions and 
recognitions. And it is furthermore true thai our 
gradu.'illv and fractionally gathered conscious experi- 
ence falls into systematized collective order, is, in fact, 



194 Biological Solutions 

incorporated in due order, in the genetically inherited 
matrix of consciousness, and is as such potentially 
preserved in the same. It is this organically preserved 
extra-conscious fund of memorized experience and 
nowise a preexistent, super-organic totality of thought 
which is explored in logical thinking by means of con- 
sciousness-awakening signs, and which then serves 
vicariously and symbolically to represent the world 
of extra-conscious existents, and their manifold rela- 
tions to our own extra-conscious being and to one 
another. It is of these existents and their relations, 
and not of the phenomenal appearances in the con- 
scious content, that valid judgments are formed for 
practical and scientific purposes. 

Generally admitted, and in fact definitely proved by 
deaf and blind children is the truth, that without 
volitional linguistic signs conceptual thinking is impos- 
sible. Linguistic signs, however, greatly differ nor- 
mally in different languages. They are not innately 
attached to sets of particulars, nor to special concepts 
which they linguistically express. They become dur- 
ing individual life volitionally and educationally con- 
nected with these definite sets of experienced facts. 
This, obviously, can take place only within the matrix 
of potential consciousness of the sundry individuals 
who use these special linguistic signs to designate 
the experiential facts. If, then, no known rational 
thinking can take place without linguistic signs, and 
if linguistic signs differing in kind, and without im- 
port in themselves, are by means of education organi- 
cally welded and assimilated in the matrix of potential 
knowledge belonging to perceptible human beings, 
who are thereby rendered capable of rational thinking, 
it follows incontestably that no rational thinking 



Substantiality 195 

can be carried on save by certain perceptible and per- 
cipient beings specifically organized, and then only as 
a result of their social education by means of volun- 
tary linguistic signs expressive of actual experience. 
Consequently, the thinking substance of the Carte- 
sians, or any other ideally conceived thinking sub- 
stance, not being a perceptible organism undergoing 
social linguistic training, and not using socially estab- 
lished linguistic signs, cannot possibly be capable of 
thinking, cannot be thinking substances or beings. 
They are, in fact, out and out fictitious entities. The 
recognition of this evident state of things is of vast 
import. It proves that rational thought is an endow- 
ment exclusively acquired by what are perceived as 
organically constituted human beings living in social 
communion. 

As regards the innate endowments and preestab- 
lished attunements of that which perceptually appears 
as the living organism, they manifestly vary much in 
degree in different organic beings. A chick just 
escaped from its shell is more efficiently endowed for 
immediate interaction with the outside world than a 
mocking-bird just hatched. A Caucasian is innately 
and genetically more highly endowed than an abori- 
ginal Australian ; a Caucasian poet or philosopher more 
highly than a lout or imbecile of the same race. These 
differences of innate endowment are clearly strictly 
dependent on organic development. However trivial 
these truths may appear, they serve to prove the 
delusive character of pure Idealism, and to point out 
the genuine substantia] source of our consciousness, 
and the kind of knowledge it normally reveals. 

Still, it has to be confessed, that it is only by means 
of a scientifically grounded epistemology that the real 



19 6 Biological Solutions 

existence of a transphenomenal, transindividual world 
outside consciousness can with certainty be legiti- 
mately inferred and existentially posited; posited, at 
least, on the strength of such evidence as amounts 
almost to positive proof. 

With the assistance of such an epistemology it has 
been here demonstrated that we are justified in infer- 
ring from facts of conscious awareness not only the 
existence of our own organic being and that of a plu- 
rality of other organic and percipient beings, but the 
existence also of an entire extra-conscious world, sub- 
sisting independently of being casually perceived by 
different percipients. And we are likewise justified 
in holding that the special existent, revealed to our 
perception as our organism, is the veritable matrix of 
our transitory, ever-renewed conscious content. To 
make good the epistemological inference in this special 
case, supported though it is by much scientific experi- 
ence, it has to be clearly shown, what ancient and 
modern philosophy has never succeeded in showing of 
any substantial existent it has assumed; to show, 
namely, how the substantial identity of the organism 
and its matrix of consciousness can permanently be 
sustained, while it is itself undergoing constant change 
and emitting an ever-renewed conscious content; to 
show, in fact, how identity amid change, despite its 
logical inconceivability, can nevertheless be preserved. 

Without positive demonstration, how identity can 
be maintained under change, how an existent identi- 
cally abiding can nevertheless undergo mutations, no 
epistemological or ontological interpretation of actual 
experience can be truly valid. It has been shown 
that no kind of pure Idealism can disentangle itself 
from the insidious meshes of phenomenalistic Solip- 



Substantiality 197 

sism, and succeed in justifying the assumption of any 
kind of substantial being. On the strength of its 
epistemological reasoning and manifold scientific ex- 
perience, Naturalism maintains here, that the extra- 
conscious entity which is perceptually revealed as the 
living organism is in all respects a veritable substance, 
remaining itself identical and yet manifesting constant 
changes; that it is in all reality the only genuine sub- 
stance known in nature. In our world it alone of all 
revealed existents has power to maintain its identity 
amid constant mutations and multifold manifestations. 

The repugnance generally felt to attribute to the per- 
ceptible living substance, called our body or organism, 
the function of emanating the conscious content, and 
therewith the entire panorama of what is consciously 
revealed; this repugnance, arising from idealistic 
and materialistic views, should be amply counter- 
balanced by considering through what indirectly in- 
cited sensorial signs the existence and characteristics 
of what we perceive as our organism are symbolically 
made manifest in conscious awareness. The more 
minutely the astonishing complexity and intricacy of 
the organization of the matrix of consciousness are 
perceptually ascertained as visible brain-structure, the 
more is there cause to marvel at the exquisitely deli- 
cate, minute, and multitudinous means actually pres- 
ent to harbor potentially and to actually manifest our 
conscious content. Surely, the extra-conscious entity 
that lias power to stimulate our vision in so wondrously 
Sp cific a manner by constant emanation of corre- 
spondingly differentiated stimulating influences may 
well be held to possess also the power to emanate its 
own conscious content. 

The visible organic commotion we call life, which 



19 8 Biological Solutions 

is sustaining with its ceaseless activity all structures 
and all functions of the living individual, reveals in its 
incomprehensible potency the profoundly mysterious 
nature of our real extra-conscious being, fully justify- 
ing us in regarding it as the veritable source of the 
flowing phenomena of our conscious content. As 
organically established and vitally sustained that 
which is perceptually revealed as neural structure may 
rightly be considered as potential consciousness. For 
it is the same vitally sustained structure that, func- 
tionally incited, manifests in its bearer the conscious 
content he becomes in consequence aware of, and 
simultaneously arouses in outsiders the perception of 
functional commotion. In vain the wide universe 
may be searched for any other permanent, substantial 
matrix of the all-revealing conscious content. Ideal 
modes of existence have no self-reality. Every ideal 
manifestation, every sensation, percept, or concept is a 
mere evanescent phencmenon without a trace of sub- 
stantial perdurability. The perceiver and thinker 
himself is hidden in extra-conscious latency. It is 
only his organized activities that become manifest to 
himself as perceptions and thoughts. His very exist- 
ence as a perceptible being becomes revealed to him- 
self only symbolically in his perceptual awareness. 

These weighty facts in mind, it will be well to re- 
sume our survey of the principal philosophical attempts 
to conceive true substantiality, being now in a posi- 
tion to point out more clearly their essential fallacies. 
As products of mere introspective logical thinking 
philosophical systems fall short on account of the 
logical impossibility of conceiving how identity can 
be preserved amid change; how a substance can emit 
changeful manifestations and yet remain itself un- 



Substantiality J 99 

changeably one and the same entity. These logically 
contradictory affirmations, necessarily implied in the 
conception of substance, and which to reconcile has 
been the main effort of philosophical contemplation, 
led, as already stated, early to drastically oppo- 
site conclusions in the primitive views of Heraclitus 
and the Eleatics. The latter could not logically con- 
ceive how change can take place in an ever-identical, 
timeless substance, which, as such, must ever remain 
immutable and homogeneous. Heraclitus, on the con- 
trary, recognizing universal change as the essential 
fact in nature, could not logically conceive how the 
perpetual flux of things can possibly proceed from 
something itself identically abiding. Later on, when 
the purely cosmological view became complicated with 
psychological consideration, the contention regarding 
the respective merits of conceived substantial identity 
and actually perceived change, became more and more 
confined to the relation obtaining between conceptual 
universals and perceptual particulars. And, despite 
many centuries of strenuous wrangling about this 
vexed question, no final decision has yet been reached. 

Diverse aspects of Plato's ideal Realism were with 
varying success opposed to diverse aspects of Nomi- 
nalism based on Aristotle's categories as predicates of 
real perceptible existents. Substantial being was 
attributed by Platonists to ideal universals; by Aris- 
totle it was attributed, on the contrary, to perceptible 
particulars as material existents. Rut ideal as well 
as material substantiality was here only hypotheti- 
cally assumed without epistemological justification. 

Modern philosophy is generally dated from I )escartes, 
for lie it was who principally succeeded in break- 
ing the spell under which church -sanctioned authori- 



200 Biological Solutions 

ties kept human thinking in subjection. He was led, 
on the one hand, by psychological, on the other hand 
by physical considerations to bisect human nature 
into two wholly disparate hypothetical substances. 
He regarded the manifestations which he considered 
to form part of consciousness, or the ideal sphere, as 
accidents of a non-extended substance; and those 
forming part of the world of extended existence, or the 
material sphere, he regarded as accidents of an uncon- 
scious space-filling substance. The former he held to 
be exclusively the matrix of intensive, psychical modes ; 
the latter the substratum of extended, physical modes. 
To the former he gave the name of "thinking sub- 
stance," believing it to be somehow in material touch 
with the human organism. The latter he named 
"extended substance," identifying it with material or 
bodily existence. In consequence of this out and out 
Dualism, Descartes and his followers found themselves 
at a loss naturally to account for the evident connec- 
tion and seeming intercommunication obtaining be- 
tween the two disparate substances. The intensive 
modes of the thinking substance could not be ration- 
ally conceived as capable of imparting motion to 
bodily existents. And the bodily or material sub- 
stance, being capable only of receiving and imparting 
mechanical modes of motion, proved impotent to 
influence in any natural manner the purely intensive, 
ideal modes of the thinking substance. The Car- 
tesians were, therefore, compelled to conclude, that 
the actually manifest concurrence of specific bodily 
movements with specifically corresponding psychical 
states can be only supernaturally effected. 

This dualistic puzzle regarding the bond of connec- 
tion between bodily actions and corresponding men- 



Substantiality 201 

tal states has — - it will be conceded — remained enig- 
matic to philosophers and scientists to the present 
day. But the epistemological insight here arrived at 
offers, as explained, an easy solution. It shows that 
what we perceive as our extended organized body and 
its movements forms just as much part of the ideal 
content of consciousness as its purely intensive modes. 
Extension and motion in actual awareness are evi- 
dently out and out psychical manifestations. In fact, 
everything we are conscious of must evidently form 
part of our conscious content. On the strength of 
this almost self-evident truth, Berkeley succeeded in 
wholly and convincingly dissolving Descartes 's ex- 
tended material substance into mere sensorial and 
perceptual modes of awareness. 

The substantiality of material extension being effec- 
tively disposed of, it remained for Hume to dispose 
likewise of the substantiality of the assumed psychical 
substance. He argued that we are consciously aware 
only of psychical particulars, at first vividly impressed 
and then faintly remembered, the bond between them 
being of purely experiential origin; and that we arc 
nowise justified in concluding that these particular 
ideal states emanate from a permanent psychical or 
thinking substance in which they inhere. 

Thus were experientially dissipated Descartcs's two 
substances, and there remained in existence only what 
we are actually aware of, which was declared to be 
made up of nothing but an insubstantial phantasma- 
goria of conscious particulars more or less firmly 
associated. This nominalistic, subjective Idealism, 
legitimately experiential as it seems, consistently ends 
in volatilizing the entire universe into a nihilistic pla\ 
of evanescent appearances, arising from vacancy into 



202 Biological Solutions 

momentary awareness, and as abruptly vanishing again 
into non-existence. True substantiality was therewith 
declared to be nowhere found in nature. Hume's 
teaching was avowedly Non-Substantialism. 

As sensorial Phenomenalism is at present gaining 
ground among thoughtful naturalists, it will be well 
to expose somewhat more explicitly, than was done 
before, the manifold fatal inefficiencies of this view. 
Since Berkeley, it has become evident to most philo- 
sophical thinkers that what we actually perceive as 
the "external world," our own body included, consists 
altogether of a certain kind of conscious states, known 
as percepts, which percepts seem themselves to be com- 
posed of sensations. Besides this perceptual world, 
there are experienced other conscious states, such as 
cravings, feelings, emotions, thoughts, and volitions. 
These are likewise held by consistent Sensational- 
ists to be sensations, or to be composed of such. 

Here the momentous question is: whether the con- 
sciously revealed world, admitted by all to be com- 
posed of nothing but diverse modes of experienced 
awareness, is self-existent, self -sustained, and self- 
actuated ; or whether it is, on the contrary, the outcome 
of the activity of some underlying, extra-conscious, 
efficient agent, substance, or matrix? Should the 
former state of things be actually found to be the true 
state, then we would have to put up with pure 
Phenomenalism, or Non-Substantialism ; if, on the con- 
trary, the latter were found to be the true state, then 
Transphenomenalism or Substantialism would be the 
philosophical creed. 

Berkeley, who more than Hume may be considered 
the originator of modern nominalistic Idealism, be- 
lieved the perceptual world to exist solely as being 



Substantiality 203 

perceived by a "mind, spirit, soul, or myself," and 
that it is this soul or Ego that not only perceives, but 
also thinks and wills, experiencing therewith the other 
non-perceptual modes of awareness; being, in truth, 
the agent or substance manifesting and apprehending 
the entire conscious content. Berkeley clearly recog- 
nized the cardinal fact, partly lost sight of by Hume, 
and altogether ignored by consistent sensationalists 
and consistent associationists ; the positive fact, namely, 
that conscious states are themselves "inactive," "pas- 
sive and fleeting, ' ' as Berkeley rightly calls them ; that 
" there is nothing of power or agency included in them " ; 
and that they can nowise " produce each other, or make 
alterations in one another." Consequently, he ration- 
ally infers that an extra-conscious, power-endowed, 
permanent substance or agent must underlie the force- 
less, evanescent modes of conscious awareness. This is 
a cardinal truth which should guide all philosophical 
interpretations of nature, but which is not recognized 
by subsequent subjective and nominalistic Idealists, 
for they attribute permanent substantiality to modes 
of awareness that are evidently forceless and fleeting. 

As to the veritable substance that underlies the con- 
scious panoramic display, only a correct epistemologv 
can point it out. Berkeley assumed without epistemo- 
logical justification that a psychical, mental, or ideal 
substance is here the desiderated efficient agent. 

Berkeley rightly holds that we individually possess 
the power to will certain kinds of mental stales to con- 
sciously arise and to consciously disappear again. He 
..are, however, that this power over our "own 
thoughts" does not extend to what is "perceived by 
." not to the perceptual world. And he rightly 
Ludes that it is essentially by means of such com- 



204 Biological Solutions 

pulsory percepts, arising unwilled by us, that we gain 
true experience of what is called the ' ' external world ' ' 
and "the settled laws of nature." Here the second 
principal question in the contention between non- 
substantialism and substantialism comes to light; 
namely, what kind of influence it is through which the 
perceptual world makes its appearance in conscious 
awareness. Is it really sense-compelled by some exter- 
nal influence, as Berkeley and common sense take for 
granted? Or does it arise into conscious existence 
uninfluenced by any external agency? Do the ele- 
mentary sensations of which the perceptual world is 
believed to be composed come into existence and as- 
sume perceptual configuration and order by means of 
their own? In fine, is the perceptual world self -caused 
and self-actuated? The latter view is the one that 
has to be held by consistent nominalistic Idealism. 
Berkeley, however, in keeping with his view of the 
inefficacy and fleeting nature of conscious states, and 
governed by his theological faith, maintains that the 
perceptual world makes its appearance in individual 
consciousness, and is actuated therein by the volitional 
fiat of the Creator. 

Consistent sensorial phenomenalism maintains that 
everything in the world is composed of sensations as 
elementary constituents; that this is all that is actu- 
ally found to be present in existence, and has there- 
fore to be taken as such without further inquiry as to 
where it comes from and how it is actuated. This 
complacent view is held despite the fact that such a 
sensorially constituted All-in-All vanishes at times 
altogether out of conscious existence, and suddenly reap- 
pears again. Where, then, has it subsisted in the mean- 
time? To pure sensorial idealism bodies and minds, 



Substantiality 205 

generally believed to constitute indiscerptible person- 
alities, can be merely definite clusters of self-existent 
and self-conscious sensations. The feeling of distinct 
individuality and personal identity is in such a sensorial 
world obviously an illusion. For the sensorial ele- 
ments alleged to compose the body are found, physi- 
cally viewed, to be in constant flux. The present body 
is not the same body of years ago, or even of yesterday, 
or of an hour ago. And, as regards that which is called 
the mind, it is even more changefully composed of 
varying complexes of sensations than the body, for 
the constituent elements of the conscious content are 
changing from moment to moment. Consequently, 
to consistent Sensationalism the entire universe con- 
sciously appearing consists of a vast kaleidoscopically 
changing panorama, formed of multitudinous senso- 
rial groupings, unperceived, unrecognized, and unwilled 
1 >y any individuated being ; not even — it must be con- 
sistently admitted — by the group of sensations that 
compose the being of the grave philosopher, who by 
application of much circumspect thought has excogi- 
tated this stupendous idealistic phantasmagoria. The 
whole system of sensorial Phenomenalism explodes 
as soon as you allow a special group of sensations, the 
philosopher himself for example, to be a separate sub- 
stantial entity conscious of the panoramic display of 
grouped sensations. You then concentrate the entire 
universe within the exclusive conscious content as 
outcome of his subjective or individual being. And 
this is no longer pure sensorial Phenomenalism, but 
monadic Solipsism. Pure Sensationalism, however, van- 
ishes into thin air, as soon as the- utterly insubstantial 
and wholly evanescent nature of real sensations isrecog- 
nized; for only by wrongly assuming sensations to lie: 



206 Biological Solutions 

permanent substantial existents can they be made to 
serve as building-material in world-construction. 

Of course, it lies near that consistent thinkers, who 
have recognized that the conscious content is the sole 
actual source of revelation, should attempt to explain 
or describe nature as really consisting of the conscious 
states themselves. But conscious states, as Berkeley 
already clearly recognized, possess no enduring con- 
sistency and no sort of efficacy. They are utterly 
forceless and fleeting. They can, therefore, neither 
group themselves, nor give rise to changes in the groups, 
nor, indeed, form any enduring groups at all; for this 
would presuppose that they remain themselves endur- 
ingly identical. It is clear, then, that to conceive sen- 
sations as enduring and therefore substantial elements 
wherewith the universe is constructed, amounts to 
fictitiously endowing them with an existential nature 
the very reverse of their own, for nothing could be more 
insubstantial and ephemeral than sensations are really 
found to be. 

Berkeley, trusting in the assistance of an omnipo- 
tent Will, and feeling safely ensconced in his perceptual 
Phenomenalism, set about refuting a number of objec- 
tions that can be brought forward against his paradox- 
ical position; among these, the typical one that we 
cannot possibly be fed and clothed by mere perceptual 
"victuals and apparels." He contends that the vict- 
uals and apparels we are conscious of undeniably con- 
sist of percepts and of nothing else, and that it must 
be, therefore, these very percepts with which we are 
fed and clothed. In thus boldly insisting upon this 
unconscionable absurdity, the fundamental insuffi- 
ciencv of his idealistic scheme plainly reveals itself. 
For he thereby contradicts his own emphatic and 



Substantiality 207 

essential doctrine, the doctrine, namely, that percepts 
have no power whatever to influence and to work 
changes in and upon one another. This being actu- 
ally the case, it is rather hard to understand how we 
can be fed and clothed, how our appetite can be satis- 
fied, and our nakedness covered, by a set of mere per- 
cepts, which are wholly powerless and evanescent. 
We, being mere mental or spiritual existents, consist- 
ing of percepts and ideas, as Berkeley maintains, how 
can we at all be fed and clothed, how can we digest 
perceptual victuals with spiritual stomachs, and put on 
perceptual apparel upon our spiritual being with per- 
ceptual hands 5 The spiritists of the present day 
actually profess to believe in a ghostly world, whose 
inhabitants are blessed with excellent appetites of all 
sorts, and are clad in manufactured dry goods. And it 
must be confessed, that the purely perceptual denizens of 
dream-land are ghostly beings, formed and clad exactly 
like the real human vertebrate, and to whom the most 
marvelous exploits are perfectly natural. Here in 
dreams, neglecting the dreaming organic being, who 
may remain unperceived, we have the nearest approach 
to the self-sustained and self-acting phantasmagoria 
of pure sensorial Phenomenalism. In the same way. 
neglecting the organic being of the excogitating philos- 
opher, bis idealistic fantasies appear self -sustained and 
self-actuated. 

Berkeley maintains furthermore that compelled per- 
cepts are only warning signs; that, for example, "the 
fire which I see is not the cause of the pain 1 suffer upon 
my approaching it, but the mark that forewarns me 
of it." Forewarns me of what? it must be asked. 
Evidently that my too close approach to the- lire will 
actually cause me to be burned and to suffer pain in 



208 Biological Solutions 

consequence. But as the perceptual fire has been 
declared to have no power to affect me in any efficient 
manner, how can my approach to it bring about "any 
alteration" in my sensations, how can it efficiently 
warn me, and, neglecting the warning, how can it cause 
a burning pain to arise in my consciousness ? 

Berkeley, strong in his faith in omnipotent Spirit, 
does not shrink from himself exposing the fatally irra- 
tional consequences of perceptual Phenomenalism. It 
is obviously legitimate to inquire where the perceptual 
world exists when not actually perceived. He un- 
flinchingly gives the only answer that can be here 
rightly given. When I shut my eyes, he says, the 
perceptual universe is in all verity "annihilated," and 
when I open them again it is instantly "recreated." 
This startling assertion is indeed applicable to all con- 
scious states. They are, in fact, as such, wholly anni- 
hilated when they vanish out of consciousness, and 
wholly reproduced when their like reissue into conscious 
awareness. Berkeley, the theologian, attributes this 
sudden annihilation and re-creation of the perceptual 
world in individual consciousness to the volitional fiat 
of the Creator. Epistemological and scientific consid- 
erations have rendered it justifiable to attribute the 
production, vanishment, and reproduction of the con- 
scious content, and therewith of the perceptual world, 
to the functional activity of our power-endowed, extra - 
conscious being, perceptually revealed as our living 
organism, and to seek for the source of perceptual 
compulsion in sensorial stimulation, emanating from 
an outside world, to which our own being has in the 
course of phyletic evolution been out and out organi- 
cally and functionally adapted. 

Another insurmountable difficulty encountered by 



Substantiality 209 

such perceptual Phenomenalism, as admits a plurality 
of percipient human beings, is likewise taken notice of 
by Berkeley. Other beings evidently cause percepts 
to arise in us — the percepts, namely, representing their 
body and its movements. But how can this possibly 
occur, when Berkeley's spiritual individuals are de- 
clared to possess power only " over their own thoughts," 
and nowise over the world ot perceptual compulsion? 
Here, then, another fatal flaw in perceptual or sensorial 
Phenomenalism becomes obvious. It is evident and 
conceded that the soul, mind, or spirit, if it is admitted 
to really exist, is itself imperceptible. And just as 
imperceptible to other percipient individuals are the 
mental states present in any one of them. Now if 
the individuals themselves consisted of mere percepts 
or combinations of sensations, as sensorial Phenome- 
nalism asserts, they would then evidently be wholly 
imperceptible to one another ; their perceptual appear- 
ance in consciousness, as actually experienced, would 
be utterly unaccountable and unintelligible, and w r ould 
then again have to be accepted as a result of super- 
natural Omnipotence. In real nature, however, it is 
an undeniable and patent fact, that a human being 
permanently or casually deprived of sight cannot per- 
ceive other beings; that his conscious content is devoid 
of the compelled perceptual appearances constituting 
the visual awareness of other human bodies. Is it not, 
then, as legitimate an inference as can be at all ven- 
tured, to conclude that it is by means of definite sight- 
stimulating influences that the perceptual appearance 
of other beings arises in conscious awareness' And, 
as the conscious stales experienced by these beings 

are wholly devoid of sense-stimulating power, it can 
be only as extra-conscious, power-endowed existents 



210 Biological Solutions 

that they can arouse by means of sense-stimulation 
their perceptual bodily appearance in the conscious 
content of the percipient. 

But in this argument the substantial existence of 
the expounding philosopher, and that of other human 
beings, was assumed contrary to pure sensorial Phe- 
nomenalism, which admits no individually enduring 
and thinking beings. It has to construct its world 
out of mere grouped sensations, as actually manifest 
in the conscious content. This all-revealing conscious 
content being itself, however, altogether forceless and 
transient, ''annihilated" and "recreated" from mo- 
ment to moment, how can it possibly form a world of 
any consistency whatever? 

Sensorial idealists manage inconsistently to over- 
come this insurmountable state of things by smuggling 
coherence and permanency by some underhand means 
into their wholly untenable system. In order to impart 
some sort of solidity and stability to it, Berkeley him- 
self relies from within on a consolidating soul or ego, 
and from without on the flat of the Creator. Hume, 
his followers, and all professed phenomenalists, derive 
their necessary supply of coherence and significance 
principally from "memory," which means from the 
permanent matrix in which all our conscious experi- 
ence is potentially contained. By being inevitably 
obliged to have recourse to the permanent fund of 
latent experience, they surreptitiously introduce as 
stable and efficient the rationally desiderated substance 
that somehow harbors and issues into conscious aware- 
ness the entire phenomenal world ready-made. For 
it is safe to say, that where memory has its latent dwell- 
ing-place, there the phenomenal world arising as con- 
scious content is in all veritv constituted. It is nowise 



Substantiality 211 

put together by any process directly operative among 
sensations, perceptions, conceptions, or any other con- 
stituents of actual awareness. The final outcome of 
this examination of pure sensorial Phenomenalism or 
Non-substantialism is emphatically that the real world 
cannot possibly consist of such stuff as the conscious 
content or dreams are made of ; not of the phenomenal 
stuff idealism uses for its fanciful constructions. 

Previous to Berkeley's nominalistic Idealism and 
Hume's enunciation of Xon-substantialism, Spinoza 
had attempted to deduce nature from a substantial 
One-and-All. He sought to prove that Descartes' s two 
substances are mere attributes of one and the same 
absolute substance, which he conceived as the veri- 
table h kul ttSlv. He labored by means of rational 
demonstration to specifically differentiate, and to set 
in motion, the out-and-out uniformity and eternal 
immobility necessarily attaching to a timeless, ever- 
identical substance. To accomplish this logically im- 
possible task, he attributed — less consistently than 
the Eleatics — to his absolute substance a fatalisti- 
cally predestined power of definite self-determination, 
through which it becomes differentiated into attributes 
and modes, whose necessity he conceived to be depend- 
ent on the unerring perfection of the One-and-All. 
By means of this assumed self-determining efficiency 
the absolute substance finds means, however, only to 
negate its all-comprising, ever-identical perfection, 
shattering it into inferior modes of existence. With 
Spinoza " determinatio est negatio" which involves a far 
ter creative fall on the part of the absolute sub- 
stance, than the biblical one caused by disobedient man. 

But, despite an elaborately excogitated series of 
self-deteriorations, the postulated absolute substance 



212 Biological Solutions 

all too clearly proves to be wholly incompetent to mani- 
fest in the remotest degree the vivid facts of actual 
human experience, which, after all, are the actually 
given facts to be accounted for. The perceptually 
extended existents of the physical world, so rich in 
efficient properties, are with Spinoza essentially mere 
geometrical figures mutually determining in definite 
ways their contiguous forms within the absolute attri- 
bute of extension. And the impassioned cravings and 
volitions of our organic nature can be here only necessi- 
tated modes of the thought-attribute, that has become 
somehow particularized within the infinite, all-compris- 
ing completeness of the absolute substance. 

But how does Spinoza really arrive at his conception 
of "substance," and how does he manage, despite its 
eternal, unchangeable identity, to make it plausibly 
evolve or manifest the multifold physical and psychi- 
cal phenomena of actual experience? He does so by 
erroneously identifying logical dependence with causal 
efficiency, as had been the generally approved method 
of philosophizing. He believed he had established 
the real existence of his absolute substance by declar- 
ing it to be " self -caused," and then, by aid of his magic 
formula, "ratio sive causa," he evolves from it all con- 
sciously experienced phenomena. God-Nature, il deus 
sive natural or the absolute substance, receives from 
Spinoza its title to real existence by being self -caused, 
by being " causa sui." But it has since become certain 
that "cause" is essentially and necessarily a relative 
term exclusively applicable to occurrences in time, of 
which there can be conceived no beginning. An occur- 
rence in time cannot possibly cause itself; nor can any- 
thing timeless or eternal be conceived as any way 
caused. The category of causation or becoming can 



Substantiality 213 

therefore nowise be legitimately employed to secure 
the eternal existence of an ontologically posited sub- 
stance. 

Spinoza, having thus by misuse of the category of 
causation fictitiously established the existence of his 
absolute substance, conceives it, then, no longer as 
causatively effective, no longer as "causa" but as 
"ra^'o," or logical ground, containing implicitly all 
reality, held by Spinoza to consist of infinite possible 
attributes. " Pens, sive omnia Dei attributa" Then, 
by the same indiscriminate use of the diametrically 
opposed principles of logical inclusion and efficient 
causation, he proceeds to differentiate into the definite 
attributes of thought and extension his unitary, timeless 
substance, and to causatively actuate their potential 
modes, by which they are made to manifest them- 
selves as the phenomena of our actually experienced 
nature. 

Fully conceding the lofty character and eminently 
circumspect acumen of Spinoza's thought, we have 
from our biological and general scientific standpoint 
to pronounce his ontological system to be, notwith- 
standing, only a fervently conceived and sagaciously 
constructed pantheistic air-castle, illusively solidified 
by an erroneous conception of universal substantiality. 
Here is offered as supreme reality an incomprehensible 
God-Nature self-caused and capable of determining 
itself in infinite attributive ways, of which two only 
of these infinitely possible infinite attributes consti- 
tute our own universe. This cosmic conception, enthu- 
siastically hailed by poets and philosophers, surpasses 
indeed in vastness infinitely the one for whose enunci- 
ation Giordano Bruno suffered a martyr's death. Bu1 
Bruno could effectively point to the multitude of blaz- 



214 Biological Solutions 

ing suns as actually existing evidence of his sublime 
conception; while Spinoza's God-Nature with its infi- 
nite attributes has its being only in the utmost logical 
expansion and saturation of the ideal notion of mathe- 
matical and geometrical infinity conceived as self- 
differentiating entity, with nothing anywhere in nature 
to testify to its actual existence. 

Still more untenable, if possible, is Leibnitz's con- 
ception of substantiality. He emphatically declares 
that a correct view of substance is the key to philoso- 
phy. With this declaration one must, indeed, fully 
agree, and it is to enforce it that these pages are writ- 
ten. Leibnitz, however, conceived substance to con- 
sist exclusively of self-acting force or power. He had 
missed forcible actuation or self-acting power in the 
two substances of Descartes, and also logically in the 
absolute substance of Spinoza. To overcome the stag- 
nation and passivity attaching to substance as an 
ever-identical, unchangeable entity, he fictitiously 
substantialized and hypostasized under the name of 
"acting force" the hidden cause of perceived actu- 
ation in nature; and with this imaginary abstraction, 
conceived as an immaterial, psychic potency, with 
this substantialized concept of bare activity as sole 
real existent, he set about constructing the universe. 
As physicist, however, he held inconsistently with his 
pure Idealism, that the world of extension is made up 
of inert matter powerless to move itself. And it was 
on the strength of this materialistic view that he was 
led to conclude that motion can be originated and 
directed only in the ideal realm of thought. Casting 
away, thereupon, his material foothold he proceeded 
to operate unhampered in a realm of pure ideal sub- 
sistence. We meet here again, as all-important, the 



Substantiality 215 

insistent need of postulating an efficient cause for per- 
ceptible motion and change; this need arising in the 
present case from the supposition that all extended 
appearances are material and inert. 

To Descartes every kind of conscious or ideal experi- 
ence was of a purely intensive nature, and he held all 
its varieties to be modes of a single thinking substance. 
Leibnitz, in imitation of the atomizing of the Eleatic 
substance on the part of the ancient physicists, broke 
up the one thinking substance into a vast multiplicity 
of individuated thinking atoms. These he called 
"monads," and held them to be simple substances, 
formless and indivisible, consisting in fact altogether 
of ideal, self-acting force. And he declared the entire 
real universe to be made up as a plenum of such unex- 
tended thought-atoms. These purely intensive ideal 
beings have, according to Leibnitz, no power whatever 
to affect one another. Nothing from outside can pene- 
trate into the wholly secluded, self-contained nature 
of these simple monadic substances. They are inde- 
structible entities, conceived, however, as creatively 
endowed with a vast potential equipment, by dint of 
which their primordially dormant consciousness gradu- 
ally awakens, fatalistically to undergo evolution from 
lowest to ever higher modes of perception, destined 
finally to reach plenitude of apperception or divine 
perfection. Their innate monadic function of percep- 
tion, dim at first, but developing into clear and clearer 
apperception, is, despite their wholly secluded self- 
activity, harmoniously ^reestablished to mirror more 
or less distinctly what at the same time is being experi- 
enced in all other monads, and therewith in the entire 
universe. 

Such is the gist of the celebrated Monadology, based 



si6 Biological Solutions 

on no actual experience, but being only an ingenious 
attempt to harmonize contending philosophical views, 
"Plato with Democritus, Aristotle with Descartes, the 
Scholastics with the Moderns." When closely exam- 
ined it unfortunately turns out to be but a strange 
medley of inconsistencies, betraying in Leibnitz also, 
how speculative license, on the one hand, and scientific 
restraint and accuracy, on the other hand, can dwell 
peacefully together in one and the same mind. 

To begin with, how can what is named " force," whose 
existence is merely inferred as the cause of motion and 
change, — how can it rightly be, more than any other 
conceptually abstracted inference, declared to be self- 
acting and to constitute a plurality of substantial, 
imperishable entities, each intrinsically endowed with 
a universe of potential thought identical with true 
reality? Where, it must be asked, can such a world 
of potential, and eventually of actual thought, have 
its biding-place or permanent matrix in something 
that is nothing but self-acting force? Action is a 
process in time.. Self-acting force must, therefore, 
necessarily exhaust itself in the production of the con- 
tent of each moment of time. How, then, can it still 
endure unexpended as the same identical, all-efhcient 
substance it is declared to be? Here, again, identity 
and change within the same substance come into 
irreconcilable conflict. And how can anything ex- 
tended, anything spatial, be possibly constituted out 
of unextended, purely intensive entities? How can 
such wholly unextended entities as the monads, them- 
selves simple and indivisible, have, nevertheless, 
extended perceptions consisting of a multiplicity of 
divisible parts? Extended or space-perception is a 
fundamental conscious experience of each individuated 



Substantiality 217 

percipient. Leibnitz, it is true, asserts that extended 
perception is merely an illusion of confused thought. 
Still it consists of a multiplicity of parts in extensive 
juxtaposition, and not in a mere confusion of intensive 
particulars. Xo kind of simultaneously perceived 
multiplicity can find room in a simple, unextended, 
indivisible, self-acting force. And how can a wholly 
self-secluded monad know, or even legitimately infer, 
that there exist other monads beside itself? And how- 
can it know that there exists a universe other than 
the one it is itself evolving as its own thought? In 
the same sense, how can a monad legitimately infer 
that it has a quasi extended body somehow connected 
with its own unextended nature — a body which con- 
sists of a vast aggregate( !) of other inferior monads, of 
which it is the central governing monad, though it. 
can nowise influence them, nor be itself in any wise 
affected by their presence ? And how can such a space- 
occupying organic body at all result, and be formed. 
by an accumulation of ever so vast a number of " form- 
less" mathematical points, which the monads, spatially 
considered, evidently are' 

This hopeless conglomeration of incompatible con- 
ceptions advanced by the great Leibnitz as supreme 
philosophical wisdom, and accepted as such by many 
followers, affords a most striking example of the truth 
of bis own saying, namely, that a correct view of sub- 
stance is the key to philosophy. This truth neces- 
sarily involves as its counterpart, that an incorrecl 
view of substance is apt to lead even the most profound 

thinkers egregiously astray. Leibnitz, besides over- 
looking the fundamental truth, that an ideal force* 
substance, no more than any other tone or substance, 

Can spend itself in action and yet remain the same 



218 Biological Solutions 

undiminished identical being — besides stranding on 
this perennial philosophical reef, he is essentially and 
wrongly influenced by the Cartesian dualism of thought 
as purely intensive or unextended; and its reverse: a 
world of external, extended things. This same dual- 
ism has ever since played perhaps the most perplexing 
part in attempts to interpret nature. As repeatedly 
stated here, and in former publications, this seeming 
irreconcilable duality and disparity of intensive thought 
and extended things quickly vanish by recognizing 
that what is experienced as extended things are really 
extended percepts, and therefore themselves modes of 
thought in the Cartesian sense. Thought and exten- 
sion, inclusive of sensation and motion, are, as modes 
of awareness, of one and the same ideal and.conscious 
nature. They are all alike mere transient phenomena, 
which, as such, can nowise constitute permanent sub- 
stances ; neither a thinking substance, nor an extended 
substance, nor a force-substance, nor any kind of all- 
comprising ideal substance. 

Kant had learned from Hume, that actual instructive 
experience cannot be gained by mere logical thinking ; 
that perceptual particulars are sense-derived; and that 
knowledge cannot be deduced from originally ready- 
made concepts through mere analytical extraction, nor 
ground out by a conceptual machine, as Leibnitz and 
some of his followers actually believed. Kant recog- 
nized, that, if sense-material has not on previous occa- 
sions been actually given and experienced as ''matter 
of fact," conceptual thinking remains impotent and 
empty, having no material to work upon. He, more- 
over, emphatically, almost passionately, believed, in 
outright opposition to pure Idealism, that sense 
material experientially arising in consciousness is an 



Substantiality 219 

outcome of external influences affecting our modes of 
sensibility. He never realized that Hume's experi- 
ential and sensorial "matter of fact" is of purely sub- 
jective or ideal origin and import, that his system is 
pure subjective Idealism. Nor did he realize that 
Leibnitz's universe of monads is likewise of purely ideal 
consistency ; a world altogether thought- woven by each 
separate monad. 1 Berkeley's perceptual idealism struck 
him as unconscionably fantastic. 

But with all his fixed belief in sense-affecting things- 
in-themselves, how did Kant, in his turn, succeed in 
breaking through the charmed circle of individual 
awareness or phenomenal Solipsism? Did he ever 
manage to alight sound and safe in the universe of real 
substantial subsistence"" Let us see. On the sensorial 
side he took the existence of sense-affecting things-in- 
themselves simply for granted, without epistemologi- 
cal proof or demonstration, and without attributing 
to them any specific characteristics, or specific sense- 
arousing qualifications. They remained, therefore, 
wholly unknown inferential existents, left entirely out- 

1 In "Uebereinc Entdeckung zur Kritik dor rcincn Vcrnunft," 
Ed. Roscnk Volt, p. 480, Kant says: "Is it possible to believe that 
Leibnitz understood under precstablished harmony the coinciding 
of two beings totally independent of each other in their nature, 
and not to be brought into communion with each other through 
their own powers? That would be indeed enunciating Idealism; 
for why should one at all assume bodies, if it is possible to view 
everything that occurs in the soul as effed of its own powers, which 
it would exert just the same when perfectly isolated 5 " (My own 
translation). Kant wrote this, 1790, when he was sixty-six years 
old. It shows how pure Idealism remained t<> the [asl foreign to 
his conviction. Yel the consistent outcome of his "Erkennt- 
nisslehre" is pure idealistic Solipsi m, involving in its inconsis- 
tencies pure transcendental Idealism, for his noumenal world, of 
which the things-in-themselves form part, is of purely idea] ^^m- 



220 Biological Solutions 

side his construction of experienced nature, nowise to 
be further taken account of. Consequently no escape 
from Solipsism is effected on the sensorial side. On 
the conceptual side, Kant declared his categories to 
be immanent modes of comprising the randomly aris- 
ing sensorial material under the "synthetical unity of 
apperception." They are admittedly powerless to 
attain knowledge of a world transcending that which 
is phenomenally given and apprehended in individual 
awareness. " Noumenorum non datur scientia" is the 
essential final conclusion of Kant's critical philosophy. 
Sensorial material worked up by the categories, through 
which nature becomes constituted, and with it, in fact, 
all possible knowledge is attained within individual 
consciousness. Consequently, neither on the concep- 
tual side does Kant's "transcendental Idealism" suc- 
ceed in effecting an escape from pure phenomenal 
Solipsism, which is irrevocably the consistent outcome 
of his system. There is no legitimate warrant what- 
ever for his problematic transcendence of individual 
Phenomenalism, which he nevertheless attempts by 
aid of an hypothetically posited "intelligible Ego" 
bearing a universally valid consciousness, and asserted 
to belong to a transphenomenal, noumenal world, of 
which nothing at all is really known. 

Kant's category of substantiality, whose application 
or function is strictly confined to the conceptual 
comprising and unification of sense-given material, is 
declared to afford identically coherent support to phe- 
nomenal changes. "Despite all change manifest in 
appearances the underlying substance persists, and its 
quantum in nature suffers neither augmentation nor 
diminution." This is how Kant formulates his prin- 
ciple of substantiality. In doing this he had evidently 



Substantiality 22 1 

the matter of natural science in mind. But how can 
a mere conceptual category, which that of substance 
like all others is here held to be — how can it possibly 
form a material quantum in nature, which suffers 
neither augmentation nor diminution? Surely it is 
no sufficient justification for attributing quantity to 
substance simply because its conception as identical 
and unchangeable involves conservation of its being. 
The quantum of a synthetizing concept is something 
unthinkable. 

Kant recognizes that all conscious states are appear- 
ances in time, and must therefore be in constant flux. 
And as the conscious content of flowing time proves 
collectively, nevertheless, to constitute a synthetic 
unity, and as it cannot arise out of nothing, something 
persisting must be the substratum or matrix, which 
imparts to it the synthetic permanence and unity, with 
which it subsequently issues into awareness as memo- 
rized experience. Conscious appearances are, there- 
fore, the fleeting, changeful outcomes or "accidents" 
of a perduring, identical substance. So far Kant is in 
perfect agreement with the view here advocated; only 
that he takes wrongly for granted that the underlying 
substance can itself remain identical or unchanged, 
while manifesting changeful accidents. The continual 
flow of conscious appearances must indeed issue from 
some permanent matrix or substance, of which they 
are transitory outcomes. But, strange to say, kani 
identifies the perdurable substance inferred to be the 
substratum or matrix of the conscious appearances 
that arise within subjective space ; he identifies it virtu- 
ally with what is called "matter" in natural science. 
This matter he declares to be the substance harboring 
and issuing all spatial appearances. These being, 



222 Biological Solutions 

however, admittedly wholly individual perceptual ap- 
pearances, or mere subjective phenomena, and all con- 
struction of nature taking place within the. phenomenal 
world of subjective consciousness, Kant holds in con- 
sequence the material substratum, said to underly and 
to impart unity to the sensorial manifold, to be like- 
wise only of ideal or phenomenal nature. For this 
reason he calls it "substantia phenomenon." But, as 
such, it can obviously not be identified with the matter 
of natural science, whose quantum neither augments 
nor diminishes. To allow perceptual appearances to 
arise from, and to be supported by, the matter of natu- 
ral science would be, indeed, Materialism of the crassest 
kind, a view which Kant was far from entertaining. 
According to his teaching, the incoherently given and 
flowing material within our spatial sense receives that 
which steadfastly underlies its synthetized appearance 
and conception from being subsumed under the cate- 
gory of substantiality. And it is said to attain thereby 
objective and universal validity. But, surely, it is 
nowise intelligible how a permanent unchanging sub- 
stantial quantum can by means of conceptual elabo- 
ration impart coherency to sensorial material, which 
as content of time is in constant flux. And it is also 
unintelligible how a process of conceptual elaboration, 
taking place altogether within the individual's con- 
sciousness, can impart to its subjective product objec- 
tive and universal validity. Substantiality within the 
world of consciousness, "substantia phenomenon" as 
Kant calls it, turns out to be a wholly fictitious concep- 
tion. Within the sphere of phenomenal or conscious 
existence nothing substantial can have any being. 

Nothing more tenable can be asserted of Kant's 
"substantia noumenon." Aware that all his concept 



Substantiality 223 

tual elaboration of sensorial material results only in 
phenomenal appearances, he feels urged to seek a real 
substantial support for his categories and their phe- 
nomenal outcomes. In order to impart true reality 
to that which underlies phenomenal appearances he 
has, however, necessarily to transcend the conscious 
play of individual awareness. For in actual aware- 
ness all is individual, subjective, and transient. To 
force an entrance into the realm of permanent, trans- 
phenomenal being, Kant has recourse to a very ques- 
ti< mable procedure. He ontologically assumes that the 
categories are binding to every kind of consciousness, 
whether human or not. He concludes that they are 
necessary modes of universal consciousness, of " Be- 
wusztsein uberhaupt." And this general consciousness 
with its universally valid synthetic unity of appercep- 
tion serves him as a plausible means to transfer all true 
reality and all synthetizing power to a supernatural 
realm of purely intelligible subsistence. Into this 
"transcendent," supernatural sphere he hypostasizes 
our natural being under the name of " intelligible Ego." 
And in this exalted region, inaccessible to human 
awareness, he believes this our intelligible, veritable 
Ego to have its existence, as a timeless, spaceless, purely 
ideal, and yet all-efficient "substantia noumenon" The 
central dilemma of the problem of substantiality, the 
dilemma, namely, how a timeless, spaceless, identical 
being can possibly emit the flow of temporal appear- 
ances, remains here as enigmatic as in all other philo- 
s< >] )hical systems. The ultimate speculate ve wi thdra wj 1 1 
by Kant of necessarily inferred substantiality into a 

timeless, spaceless sphere of arbitrarily assumed super- 
natural subsistence amounts to a full confession, 
thai genuine substantiality, or the harboring, issuing, 



224 Biological Solutions 

and actuating matrix of that which is consciously and 
phenomenally revealed, is in Kant's view nowhere to 
be found in nature itself. The problem of substan- 
tiality is therewith virtually declared to be philo- 
sophically and scientifically insoluble by the most 
circumspect and profound of modern thinkers. 

Kant's idealistic followers, Schelling, Fichte, Hegel, 
Schopenhauer, and their numerous disciples, boldly 
postulate, and ontologically substantialize as all-effi- 
cient entity, some characteristic, or some constituent, 
of our individual experience as given in the all-revealing 
conscious content, such as its subject-object signifi- 
cance, its effective volition, its conceptual thought, 
its affective emotions. And they, then, rationally or 
"irrationally" attempt to deduce or derive from such 
potentialized abstractions the entire world of actual 
experience. Science cannot sanction such arbitrary 
procedure, howsoever ingeniously carried out. More- 
over, and quite essentially, in none of these manifold 
and multifold attempts at reaching real substantiality 
is to be found the remotest explanation of the principal 
dilemma of the problem; namely, how a substantial 
entity, be it even one of the fictitious and dogmatic 
sort posited by philosophers — how it can remain identi- 
cal whilst undergoing or manifesting change; how its 
inferred permanent and timeless being can come to 
issue a succession of temporal appearances ? This fun- 
damental dilemma has been the fatal stumbling-block 
of every philosophical interpretation of natural phe- 
nomena from the time of the Eleatics up to the present 
day. 

This rather lengthy discussion of the essential points 
in the sundry views of substantiality entertained by 
some of the foremost philosophers; views recognized 



Substantiality 225 

by themselves as the very focus of their thought, from 
which all interpretation of nature consistently irradi- 
ates, and towards which it converges; this critical 
discussion was here entered upon to show conclusively 
that the central problem of substantiality cannot be 
solved by mere logical thinking, nor by ontological 
assumptions. But, before a positive conciliation can 
be attained between the logically antithetical properties 
of identity and change, of timelessness and temporality, 
as belonging to one and the same entity, and as con- 
stituting a genuine substance ; before this conciliation 
can be proved to be actually effected, — all philosophy 
must necessarily rest on an unsound foundation. For 
it remains, then, wholly enigmatic from what perma- 
nent and identically sustained source or matrix our 
all-revealing, but constantly changing conscious con- 
tent issues into awareness. And it is clear, that with- 
out such substantial source or matrix the conscious 
content itself would arise out of nothingness and revert 
into nothingness, which amounts to pure phenomenal- 
istic Xihilism. 

The entire history of philosophy records essentially 
a vain search after genuine substantiality. Where, 
then, is it to be found? Where can we discern the 
veritable substance in nature that undergoes or mani- 
fests changes and yet remains identical; that is. in 
fact, the identically abiding source or matrix of the 
multifold flowing phenomena of the nature we are 
conscious of;- It cannot be found in the matter of 
natural science, for it is held to consist of elements 
that undergo themselves no change. It cannot be 
found in anything possessing the nature of conscious, 
mental, or ideal states, for these are obviously all phe- 
nomenal and transient. It cannot be found in motion, 



226 Biological Solutions 

force, or energy as sometimes supposed by philosophers 
and naturalists, for "motion" is a mere perceptual 
sign of activity in nature, "force" the mere inferred 
cause of what is perceived as imparted and accelerated 
motion, and "energy" the mere hypostasized meas- 
urable effect of actuation among perceptible objects. 

Within the whole range of actual experience there 
has, as yet, no identically abiding substance been scien- 
tifically detected, as source whence the flux of natural 
phenomena we are actually conscious of can possibly 
emanate. The truth is we are scientifically investi- 
gating and philosophically interpreting nothing but 
evanescent subjective phenomena, which, however, 
happen nevertheless in some as yet unexplained way 
practically to stand for persistent, orderly, and objec- 
tive occurrences. The actually experienced steadfast, 
systematic, and generally valid significance of in fact 
transient, incidental, and individual experience con- 
stitutes the hitherto unsolved problem of genuine 
substantiality. How can a flowing, ever changing 
conscious content reveal a steadfast, abiding nature ? 

It is clear that without positive demonstration of 
the real presence, and the knowledge of the properties 
belonging to the veritable substance or matrix whence 
our conscious content issues into awareness — that with- 
out such objective information of its existence and char- 
acteristics no philosophic nor scientific interpretation 
of nature can amount to more than a mere description 
of the phenomenal panorama arising from moment to 
moment in individual consciousness, scientifically sup- 
plemented, however, by the highly important measure- 
ment of the dimensions and interdependent movements 
of its spatial appearances. Of course, such seemingly 
pure phenomenalistic interpretation cannot be really 



Substantiality 227 

carried out; for it presupposes as realizing conscious 
agent, and as means of its procedure, an infinitely more 
substantial groundwork than is here theoretically taken 
notice of. 

Disconcerted by the fancifulness and inadequacy of 
hypothetical assumptions, and fascinated by the philo- 
sophical recognition, that only the direct content of 
consciousness affords actual experience — everything 
transcending it being metaphysical, and therewith 
inferential and problematical — fascinated by this out- 
and-out idealistic view, scientists in growing numbers 
are resigning themselves to look upon solipsistic Phe- 
nomenalism as the only possible goal of a scientific 
interpretation of nature founded on positively and 
directly given facts. They aim to purify science of all 
metaphysical presuppositions and conclusions, and to 
take account only of what is actually given in con- 
sciousness, regardless of transphenomenal implications. 
Guided by this view, they fail to recognize that science 
cannot take the least step without such metaphysical 
presupposition. First of all, it presupposes tacitly the 
entire transphenomenal being of the scientist himself. 
But even leaving him out of consideration, taking his 
perceiving, thinking, and investigating faculties, to- 
gether with what perceptually appears as his organism, 
tor granted, there is found directly given in his con- 
scious ton tent nothing but an insubstantial play of 
evanescent modes of awareness. And this is the only 
available material at the disposal of philosophy and 

science. 

The sensations which the scientist experiences are 

eminently futile. A sight, a touch, a taste are wholly 
evanescent modes of awareness, which exist only SO 
long as they are forming part of the conscious content. 



2i8 Biological Solutions 

If he, nevertheless, in his imaginary sensorial construc- 
tions attributes to them, and to the percepts composed 
of them, any permanency, he is straightway guilty of a 
metaphysical assumption, and here of a purely ficti- 
tious one; without which assumption, however, he can 
construct nothing in the least enduring and coherent. 
The sense-woven percepts which issue ready-made into 
spatial awareness on visual and tactual incitement, 
and which are the immediate objects of physical inves- 
tigation, vanish forthwith out of conscious existence, 
whenever we divert our attention from them. Where, 
then, do they enduringly subsist? If they at all en- 
dure, they can only subsist potentially, and therewith 
metaphysically, in extra -conscious latency. It is true 
the scientist finds himself able to apply to perceptual 
appearances sundry ingenious modes of measurement. 
But this highly important performance is rendered 
possible only by its taking place on a persistent meta- 
physical and substantial background of identical activ- 
ity. For the perceptual appearances he is apparently 
measuring are themselves continuously moving phe- 
nomena in time, without the least staying quality of 
their own. If the underlying substance or matrix 
whence they issue were not through persistent identical 
activity emitting the same kind of flowing perceptual 
appearances, insuring thereby their phenomenal stabil- 
ity, no seemingly identical percept in phenomenal 
repose could possibly be apprehended, investigated, 
and measured. Of course, an indispensable condition 
is, furthermore, that the stimulating, sense-compelling 
influences remain likewise identical during the process, 
or are undergoing definite changes, measurable in the 
corresponding changes of the perceptual appearances. 
As to the scientifically generalized conceptions re- 



Substantiality 229 

garding what is consciously revealed, they cannot 
really apply to mere appearances within the conscious 
content ; for these, one and all, possess no trace of exist- 
ential persistence, no more than time itself of which 
they are a transient content, or rather which they 
themselves subjectively and flowingly constitute on 
a foil of enduring memory. The generalities of science 
must then evidently apply to metaphysical entities 
and their perceptible activities. Finally, when a num- 
ber of scientists are said to verify results of investi- 
gation in order to obtain objectively valid information, 
do these sundry scientists and their activities, together 
with the plurality of objects they are investigating, 
possess no other existence and reality than that which 
they receive in the single solipsistic conscious content 
which happens at the time being to become aware of 
it all, by means of collective and representative signs 
of purely symbolical significance ? And this is, in fact, 
what subjective Idealism has to maintain. 

It is, indeed, certain that everything each of us in 
this world is any way conscious of becomes solely re- 
vealed in our successive moments of actual awareness. 
Whence, then, this all-revealing flow of conscious 
states' Conscious experience accrues to us, moreover, 
during our lifetime casually and piecemeal in lapsing 
moments of actual awareness. Where, then, is to be 
found the matrix in which it nevertheless becomes 
potentially preserved and rationally systematized, so 
as to reissue into actual awareness on future occasions, 
but then as integrated part of consolidated knowledge, 
fit for practical guidance in the conduct of life? 

The answer to these fundamental questions, though 
the) an- philosophically knotty in the extreme, lies in 
a general way near at hand. For the harboring and 



230 Biological Solutions 

issuing matrix of the all-revealing conscious content 
has, as has been epistemologically shown, its seat in 
the extra-conscious existent that is perceptually appear- 
ing as our bodily organism. No one has ever seriously 
doubted that he has a body which incorporates his indi- 
vidual being, and whose vital activities sustain his life 
with all its mental and bodily functions. Yet, taking, 
as is usually done, the body we perceive to be an exter- 
nal material existent, it becomes therewith wholly 
unintelligible how such an existent, held to consist of 
inert material particles, can be the matrix of potential 
mind, and how its functional activity, which would 
then be of a purely mechanical nature, can give rise to 
the succession of the conscious states which issues into 
actual awareness. But if the body we perceive is not 
an external material existent, of what does it then 
really consist? 

It has been epistemologically shown, that the body 
we actually perceive as our own, together with all other 
perceived bodies, are solely appearances in the medium 
of our perceptual awareness, and consist, therefore, 
as such, of nothing but transient phenomenal appear- 
ances, and nowise of material particles. But it be- 
comes, in its turn, wholly unintelligible how such a 
perceptual body, consisting of nothing but transient 
modes of awareness, can constitute a permanent exist- 
ent, containing the matrix of the entire conscious 
content, of which the perceived body forms itself only 
an occasional fragment? 

A legitimate escape from this perplexing dilemma, 
with its materialistic and idealistic horn, has been at- 
tempted in the epistemological discussion. It was 
found, that we are fully justified in concluding that 
what is perceptually revealed as our bodily organism 



Substantiality 231 

is a reliable symbolical representation in conscious 
terms or signs of a relatively permanent, extra-con- 
scious existent, which is standing in manifold effective 
relations to other extra-conscious existents perceived 
as its natural medium. Only under the epistemologi- 
cally justified inference that the organic being is a rela- 
tively permanent existent, subsisting independently 
of being casually revealed in the perceptual awareness 
of who happens at the time being to observe it; only 
under this always tacitly accepted supposition does 
biology gain the significance of an objectively valid 
science ; and only under this condition can the Nihilism 
of solipsistic Phenomenalism be overcome in which our 
science and philosophy find themselves at present 
inextricably involved. If the real objects under inves- 
tigation consisted only of the transient phenomenal 
display within the observer's own individual aware- 
ness, having no reference to any real and enduring 
existence beyond, then physics and biology as objec- 
tive sciences, or as a consistent system of verifiable 
knowledge, would be altogether impossible. Each 
separate observer, for instance, in studying the charac- 
teristic features and functions belonging to a specimen 
of the same kind of real organism, is indeed studying 
it in the symbolical medium of his exclusive individual 
awareness, mostly in the medium of his perceptual 
vision. This perceptual vision he finds to be strictly 
compelled in its minutest details of figuration and 
movement by his intentionally directed exposure to 
definite sense-affecting influences, which are rightly 
interred to be emanating from a permanent, extra- 
conscious organic being. If the definite perceptual 
awareness which is considered to take place in each 
number of separate observers wen roused in 



232 Biological Solutions 

each case by specific influences emanating from what- 
ever specimen of the same kind of extra-conscious 
being that may at the time being be observed, there 
would be here in existence, under the purely idealistic 
view, nothing but the perceptual, conceptual, and imag- 
inative awareness of one single conscious content. All 
postulated observers, believed to have separate exist- 
ences, and to be corroborating at a distance from one 
another facts to be gained by the observation of differ- 
ent specimens of the same kind of organism; all these 
observers, together with their individual experience, 
would then exist solely as unaccountably arising more 
or less vividly in the imagination of the one solipsistic 
conscious content actually aware of it all. This fan- 
tastic state of things necessarily advocated by pure 
Idealism would obviously render impossible the formu- 
lation of any objectively valid science, and, indeed, of 
conceiving any rational view of consciously revealed 
existence in general. Nevertheless, strange to say, 
such solipsistic Idealism is a view at present adopted 
by a number of prominent scientists. 

We undeniably gain our objectively valid know- 
ledge by taking — in the case in question, for instance — 
the perceptually revealed organism in all its details of 
structure and function to be a reliable symbolical rep- 
resentation of the characteristics and activities of a 
permanent, extra-conscious being ; a being that exists 
independently of being perceived by the present ob- 
server, and which can be itself, or other specimens of 
the same kind, likewise perceived by a number of other 
real percipients. These realistic inferences, though 
they may be called "metaphysical," are unhesitatingly 
believed in and acted upon by all sane human beings, 
and have been here sufficiently shown to be epistemo- 



Substantiality 133 

logically justified . They form the indispensable ground- 
work -of all objective science. 

The extra-conscious, power-endowed existent per- 
ceptually revealed as the living organism, is found 
physically to be constantly changing, and psychically 
to emanate from moment to moment the all-revealing 
conscious content. How does it manage, while thus 
involved in a whirl of change, nevertheless, to remain 
essentially identical? How, in fact, does it come to 
constitute the veritable substance of which philosophy 
and science have been so long in search of ; the substance 
harboring and issuing into actual awareness the all- 
revealing conscious content, and with it the entire 
nature we are directly conscious of? 

The solution of the enigma of substantiality, of 
identity amid change, is to be found in a biological 
occurrence positively demonstrated, which completely 
reconciles the logically contradictory attributes of iden- 
tity and change. In the living substance, of which 
all organisms consist, is actually brought about the 
coexistence in one and the same entity of the con- 
tradictory attributes of persistency and change, of 
undiminished identity maintained amid constant 
expenditure. It is the same process in which life itself 
essentially consists which also endows it concomitantly 
with genuine substantiality, which secures amid con- 
stant change the essential identity of the living being 
and its manifest functions. No function of the living 
being, be it physical or psychical, can take place without 
a corresponding expenditure and waste of the function- 
ing structure. If its impaired integrity were not 
made whole again, its functioning capacity would 
necessarily deteriorate and be soon completely ex 
hausted, under simultaneous disintegration of the 



234 Biological Solutions 

underlying structure. To be able adequately to per- 
form its normal function over and over again, and not 
become organically impaired, the functioning struc- 
ture has necessarily to be kept intact through reintegra- 
tion. And so has the entire living being in order to 
remain identically itself, despite the constant changes 
it is undergoing. 

This structural reintegration to identical consist- 
ency and capacity, while spending itself in multifold 
functional activity, is that in which the life of the 
organism essentially consists, and which constitutes 
it a genuine substance ; in fact, the only genuine sub- 
stance we have at all knowledge of. For all other 
so-called substances, when they suffer change, lose 
thereby their identity, becoming something different 
by force of the change, and remaining so afterwards. 
Now it is clearly this reintegration to substantial iden- 
tity following upon functional disintegration, which 
empowers the living being to preserve in its wholeness 
the subtily organized consistency of the harboring and 
issuing matrix of the conscious content, enabling it to 
emit in successive, ever-renewed moments of awareness 
memorized and systematized experience. 

Without being thus issued into manifest awareness 
from an identically abiding matrix of potential con- 
sciousness, experience, if at all possible, would be 
utterly chaotic. No seemingly enduring identity of 
percepts in successive moments of time, and no memo- 
rized recognition of the same, could at all take place, 
and therewith no perceptual awareness of the phenom- 
enal world as a coherent and consistent whole; in 
fact, no kind of remembering and remembered con- 
sciousness extending beyond a meaningless, truncated 
content of the present moment of awareness. The 



Substantiality 23 5 

steadfast, orderly world we are conscious of is abso- 
lutely dependent on specific organization of the liv- 
ing substance persistently maintained by adequate 
reintegration, following the disintegration necessarily 
involved in functional activity. 1 

Genuine substantiality, then, sought for by philo- 
sophy and science as that which identically endures, 
while manifesting the changeful panorama of the world 
we are conscious of; this genuine substantiality is 
actually and positively found incorporated in the vitally 
functioning organization of that which is perceptually 
revealed as the " living substance," and nowhere else 
in existence. 2 

1 See "The Substantiality of Life," "Mind," 1881. 

2 On the strength of epistemological considerations the con- 
scious content was found to be a function of what is perceptually 
revealed as neural structure. As the question of mind being a 
function of the brain has played perhaps the most conspicuous part 
in scientific and philosophical discussions; and whereas its mis- 
interpretation has given rise to materialistic views on the one hand, 
and to idealistic views on the other hand, it will be well to place 
this much vexed question once more in a clear light. 

When in the middle of last century German materialists, reviv- 
ing eighteenth century views, horrified the world by declaring 
that the brain secretes thoughts in the same way as the liver secretes 
bile; and the contention thereupon raged between " Koehlerglaube 
und Wissenschaft," no remotest satisfactory understanding was 
reached at the time. In its simplest expression the contention 
was made to turn upon the relation of motion to sensation. Motion 
as motility was declared by physiologists to be a function of the 
muscular system, sensation a function of the neural system. The 
materialistic contention in this form, though not essentially differ- 
ing from that which gave so much public offense, appeared more 
ble and less debatable. Yet on close scrutiny it was found 
to be wholly unintelligible, how sensation, which cannot be denied 

to be a psychical phenomenon, can possibly be the functional out- 
come of a materia] neural substance. An<l so the matter rested. 
"Igncrabimus" seemed to be here the final verdict. Scientists 
and philosophers, v. ho van- not wholly one-sided materialists or 



236 Biological Solutions 

idealists had to content themselves with psycho-physical Paral- 
lelism, a dualism as trenchant as that of Descartes. 

By recognizing, however, that what is actually perceived as 
matter and motion, and therewith as brain and its physiological 
function forms part of the conscious content of the observer who 
is actually aware of it ; by recognizing this fact, it is found to be all of 
psychical and nowise of material consistency. Under this view the 
dualism of brain and mind, or motion and sensation, resolves itself 
in the first instance into pure psychical Monism. For everything 
here consciously revealed takes place exclusively within the con- 
scious content of the individual who is aware of it all. The per- 
ceived matter and motion, the observed organism and its functions, 
form just as much part of his conscious content as his thoughts and 
emotions. 

But on further consideration such psychical Monism turns out 
to be demonstrably untenable, as soon as the existence of a 
plurality of percipient beings is admitted. The observer perceives 
indeed distinctly, as forming part of his conscious content, my 
organism with its movements, and all other functional outcomes, 
such as bile-secretion. But he is nowise in the same way directly 
aware of anything forming part of my own consciousness; nor am 
I directly aware of anything forming part of his own consciousness. 

Evidently what he perceives as my organism and its functions, 
which as such is forming part of his own conscious content, cannot 
possibly be anything really belonging to me. If it has at all any- 
thing to do with me, it can only perceptually reveal to him the 
presence and cetain activities of my extra-conscious being. Extra- 
conscious my perceptible being has to be called, because nothing 
forming part of my consciousness is at all perceptible to him or to 
any other being beside myself. My own conscious content rises with- 
in myself into actual awareness as a direct function or activity of 
the extra-conscious matrix which potentially contains it, and which 
is forming part of my extra-conscious being. This extra-conscious 
being, as a whole, has power to stimulate in certain definite ways the 
senses of outside observers, whereupon its vivid perceptual repre- 
sentation in all its details of structure and function makes its appear- 
ance as part of the conscious content of each observer. 

That which is thus perceptually revealed to outside observers as 
an organism and its functions, constitutes the direct object of ana- 
tomical and physiologcial research; while my own conscious content 
constitutes the direct object of psychological research, whose 
phenomena are, however, found to correspond strictly to the 
observer's awareness of definite modes of brain -function. What 
is consciously perceived by the observer, and what in correspon- 



Substantiality 237 

dence with it is consciously experienced by myself, are all alike 
psychical phenomena; but the former are sense-stimulated, and 
may be perceived by any number of outside percipients, while the 
latter are intrinsically arising within myself exclusively as direct 
outcome of the activity of my extra-conscious being. 

To revert to the materialistic contention, that the brain secretes 
thoughts, just as the liver secretes bile; the truth is that the physio- 
logical observer actually perceives the liver, as thus forming part 
of his conscious content, secreting bile. All this conscious occur- 
rence takes place within his own awareness. But he does not see 
the brain forming likewise part of his own conscious content secrete 
the thoughts which on functional activity arise exclusively within 
myself and of which he remains wholly unconscious. He becomes 
conscious, however, of the same activity which causes thoughts 
to arise within myself, but only in a round-about, sense-stimulated 
way, as functional commotion within the perceptual brain forming 
part of his conscious content. 



III. CAUSATION. 

When seriously contemplated it must appear almost 
self-evident, that all we are consciously aware of forms, 
as such, part of what we recognize as our own con- 
scious content. And it is quite as certain that this 
all-revealing consciousness issues into actually experi- 
enced existence as the content of what is called " time," 
and that it is therefore as flowing and lapsing as time 
itself. It follows, as repeatedly insisted upon, and as 
being of utmost importance, that all we immediately 
experience in conscious awareness accrues to us in the 
one moment of time we call the "present." Conse- 
quently, the entire actual awareness of what consti- 
tutes our own being, and that of other existents, is, as 
such, a mere transitory, though continuously renewed 
and amplified phenomenal revelation. The content of 
the present moment of awareness yields, then, our only 
source of conscious revelation. The philosophical and 
scientific interpretation of nature has no other directly 
given material to work upon in its attempt to disclose 
the realistic implications of this phenomenal display 
of transient modes of awareness. 

In examining the nature of "Substance" it was 
shown that the existence of an identically enduring 
matrix, underlying and manifesting the transient phe- 
nomena of actual awareness, is necessarily and ration- 
ally inferred in compliance with the supreme axiom of 
coherent and consistent philosophical as well as scien- 
tific thinking; the axiom, namely, that "ex nihilo nihil 

238 



Causation 239 

fit.* 1 No thinker who has ever attempted to demon- 
strate the self -existence of the conscious content as a 
whole, or that of any of its constituents, has ever plaus- 
ibly succeeded in this more than rope-of-sand under- 
taking without surreptitiously presupposing some- 
where in extra-conscious latency a substantial matrix 
of the flowing and fleeting conscious phenomena. This 
matrix is generally conceived by experientialists as 
what is known as "memory," and by transcendental 
Idealists as what they posit as "universal reason," 
"intelligence," or the "Absolute." 

Leibnitz, who looked upon the conscious content as 
a gradual evolution towards complete divine appercep- 
tion, hypostasized as substantial bearer and proximate 
actuation of the same "force" or "active power," and 
attributed to it a purely psychic nature; though, in 
fact, nothing like force or acting power can at all be 
detected as belonging to the psychic phenomena of 
actual awareness. These are all we directly know of 
psychical existence, and they are all obviously forceless 
and evanescent. Even if "force" could possibly con- 
stitute a substance or entity remaining identical while 
spending itself in producing appearances and their 
changes; even then it would, in order substantially to 
exist, be of a nature differing altogether from what 
we know as psychical. Leibnitz, by conceiving " force" 
as a psychical substance, assumed in fact as the world- 
producing and world-actuating agent an utterly force- 
less fiction. The world of psychic phenomena which, 
for him, constitutes the only really existing world, is 
here virtually supposed to arise out of nothing through 
purely psychical means. But in no natural way can the 
evolving consciousness of such simple substances, or 
units of individuated force, as his monads are held to 



240 Biological Solutions 

be, arise fatalistically out of an innate endowment of 
the particle of psychic force of which they are said 
wholly to consist. An ideal phenomena-producing 
agent must either have some raw-material to work 
upon, as the formless v\rj of Plato, or it must create 
its phenomena out of nothing, as Fichte pretended to 
do, and as Leibnitz virtually did, although he conceived 
his monads as supernaturally endowed with a potential 
world-creating consciousness. 

Neither substantiality, necessarily inferred as under- 
lying natural phenomena, nor causation as effecting 
their changes, are in the least accounted for by these 
eminent thinkers. 

Hume, who called the "idea of substance" an "un- 
intelligible chimera " denying also causative efficiency 
in nature, and who believed, therefore, his system to 
be pure Nonsubstantialism and forceless phenomenal- 
ism, had, notwithstanding, to presuppose somewhere in 
latency an enduring memory as substantial bearer and 
issuing matrix of the "ideas" that faintly remember 
vivid "impressions," assuming therewith some sort of 
efficient bond between them ; and this despite his having 
positively declared all "impressions" and therewith 
all their dependent "ideas" to be mere "internal and 
perishing existences." Fichte who, unrecognized by 
himself, freely operated with his own latent store of 
gathered experience as arising within his conscious con- 
tent, believing it to be a spontaneous, world-creating 
activity, conceived, nevertheless, a substantial Ego, as 
the enduring bearer of the activity that freely posits 
and wholly creates all existence. 

Without substantiality and efficiency no world con- 
struction will hold together. But these solidifying 
principles are not to be reached by detaching from the 



Causation 241 

flowing conscious content of our moment of actual 
awareness one or the other of its distinguishable psychic 
phenomena, such as sensation, thought, volition, affec- 
tion, and hypostasize it conceptually generalized and 
substantialized, as effective and permanent psychic 
power or faculty. Xature is not made of such fictitious, 
ephemeral stuff. Indeed, it cannot be too often and 
too emphatically insisted upon, that without inferring 
a non-psychical, extra-conscious, substantial matrix. 
whence the conscious content issues into awareness in 
significant and coherent order, there remains in exist- 
ence nothing but a complex of perishing, meaningless, 
conscious phenomena, unsupported, unperceived, and 
understood by any enduring subject. 

The conception of substantial permanence amid 
change is necessitated by the fact that all conscious 
phenomena form part of the transient content of ever- 
lapsing time, and are therefore themselves wholly un- 
substantial and evanescent. A steadfast substantial 
entity is, moreover, necessitated as the enduring sub- 
ject, who not only manifests the conscious content, but 
is himself apprehending, remembering, cognizing, and 
recognizing its multifold import. Such a subject has 
been epistemologically and scientifically demonstrated 
to consist of what is perceptually revealed as our living 
organism. Besides being intuitively held by all ra- 
tional beings to be at least the bearer and manifesting 
agent of the conscious content it carries along with 
it, it alone in our world is identically reintegrated 
while spending itself in multifold activities, without 
which nothing steadfastly abiding, nothing identi- 
cally conceived, could exist in the nature we are 

conscious of. Our organic being, itself through and 
through in constant flux, and vet capable of maintain- 



242 Biological Solutions 

ing its essential identity amid all change, proves to be 
the real subject that harbors as its own possession the 
matrix of the all-revealing conscious content, and that 
consciously feels, perceives, thinks, experiences the 
emotions and wills the actions, in which his mental life 
consists. Having thus arrived at a scientifically demon- 
strable conclusion regarding the only real substantial 
entity and agency in nature as consciously revealed, 
the second principal problem of philosophy and science, 
that, namely, of " causation," still awaits satisfactory 
solution. 

How far is the bond of efficient causation we con- 
sciously apprehend as obtaining between natural phe- 
nomena; how far is it organically or otherwise knit 
within the apprehending subject; and how far does it, 
independently of such subjective origin and conscious 
apprehension, obtain directly between the occurrences 
of the so-called physical, non-psychical, extra-conscious 
world ? 

In giving expression to the problem of causation in 
this form it becomes obvious what tangled question it 
really is, involving all the difficulties encountered in 
idealistic and in materialistic interpretations of nature. 
Its idealistic conception led Hume, a genuine experi- 
entialist, to ignore altogether causal efficiency as ob- 
taining in any sphere outside consciousness, and to 
reduce the seemingly necessary connection between 
natural phenomena to habitual experience of their 
sequence as they arise within consciousness. Kant, 
ignoring, likewise, causal efficiency outside the con- 
scious individual, attributed it to a synthetical power 
inherent in his conceptual category of causality. By 
materialists, on the contrary, true causation is regarded 
as directly and necessarily obtaining between the phe- 



Causation 243 

nomena of physical nature, irrespective of their con- 
scious apprehension, and regardless of any causative 
intervention within the organic being of the physical 
observer. 

It would be a great mistake to believe that the true 
nature of causation had been disclosed either on the 
idealistic side or on the materialistic side. Necessary 
sequence of organic activities accompanied by con- 
scious phenomena; necessary sequence of perceptual 
sense-stimulated phenomena, and necessary sequence 
of extra-conscious physical occurrences consciously 
signalized, these are modes of causation so interwoven, 
so complex, and so obscure in their origin that the 
prospect of an adequate understanding of the causa- 
tive processes underlying such necessary sequence has 
hardly yet come in sight. 

Previous to the experiential mode of interpretation, 
thinkers finding in the course of their reasoning ready- 
made and systematized concepts at their disposal, 
which independent of actual perceptual awareness 
seemed to comprise as their own content all particulars 
of knowledge, very generally believed that knowledge 
is really attained by a ratiocinative process that dis- 
closes all we can possibly know as involved consequents 
or particulars logically flowing from conceptual prem- 
ises. Efficient causation was either completely over- 
looked or identified with logical "reason." "Ratio 
sen causa" became a potent formula wherewith to 
conjure up from their latent dwelling-place into con- 
scious awareness the phenomena of actual experience. 
Logical deduction was until recently the only acknow- 
ledged canon of truth. Not before the primary and 
grounding import of perceptual awareness became 
definitely lized, principally through the influence 



244 Biological Solutions 

of Locke, who adopted the experiential method recently 
employed in natural science ; not before then was the 
spell of undisturbed ascendency so long enjoyed by 
conceptual reasoning seriously broken. The unheeded 
Aristotelian dictum, " nihil est in intellectu, quod non 
fuerit in sensu, " began now to be consistently used in 
guiding the interpretation of the conscious content. 
English Experientialism, instead of expecting the influx 
of knowledge to accrue intuitionally from innate depths 
of our being, searched for it at the sensorial pole. 
Sensationalist explanations won growing numbers of 
adherents and scandalized philosophizing theologians 
and conceptualist philosophers, who were dreaming 
their dogmatic dreams and indulging their unham- 
pered fancy on the high a priori road. Sensationalism, 
however, soon grew overbold, and maintained again 
with Protagoras, that everything in nature is actually 
made up of nothing but sensations ; an opinion, by the 
by, toward which a number of our present scientists 
are inclining, having adopted sensorial Idealism as their 
creed. 

Hume, though himself a radical experientialist, rec- 
ognized the nihilistic consequences to which such pure 
Sensationalism necessarily leads. For if everything 
in nature really consists of a complex of sensations, 
which are "perishing existencies" accruing at random, 
how can they of their own accord come to constitute 
definite enduring entities, that stand in definite rela- 
tions to one another as actually experienced? Even 
the fictitious substantializing of separate sensations or 
perceptions as the enduring material of nature failed to 
account for the definite and orderly connections of its 
phenomena as actually experienced. The orderly com- 
position and concatenation of sensations or "impres- 



Causation 245 

sions" found established in experience, despite their 
evanescence and their disconnected random accruance 
in direct awareness, had evidently to be accounted for. 
Hume, as all students of philosophy know, sought to 
solve this profound and essential problem, involving 
that of causation, by assuming that the habitual fre- 
quency of experienced succession among definite im- 
pressions establishes eventually a seemingly causative 
link between them, so that a given antecedent impres- 
sion will always be followed in consciousness by its 
habitual consequent as "idea." The vivid impression 
of fire, for instance, is thus always followed in conscious- 
ness by the faint idea of heat, which as a vivid impression 
had always been experienced as immediately arising 
after it. In Hume's view, what is called " causation " 
consists then, as he himself states, in "an idea related 
to or associated with a present impression." 

It is clear that this attempt at solving the problem 
of causation fails altogether to deal with the real bond 
of necessary, forceful connection in nature. In Hume's 
forceless habitual connection between definite vivid 
impressions and definite faint ideas there is obviously no 
real causation involved, not even in invariable seque ice, 
but only a highly probable association between definite 
vivid percepts and definite ideas aroused in consequence 
from latent memory. Association, and not causation, 
is the outcome of Hume's teaching concerning the link 
by which separate units of experience arc welded t<>- 
gether. 

It is true that what is actually perceived as fire 
whose extra-conscious existence is, however, not ad- 
mitted by Hume is as vivid impression always and 
necessarily connected in real nature with what may be 
actually fell as heat. But this same vivid impression 



14.6 Biological Solutions 

of "fire" is obviously not necessarily and infallibly 
followed in consciousness by the "idea" of heat. One 
may quite well perceive fire without the idea of heat 
arising in consciousness. But one cannot actually 
perceive fire without on approaching it being actually 
and forcibly made to feel as vivid impression the heat 
invariably found to be connected with it. Considering 
true causation in nature, the real question is evidently — 
expressed in Hume's terminology — how the fire as a 
vivid impression happens to be invariably connected 
with heat, as likewise a vivid impression, and not merely 
with heat as a faintly remembered idea. Of such real 
connection in nature Hume took advertently no notice. 
Captivated by Berkeley's nominalistic Idealism, he 
sought to explain what is revealed in the conscious 
content as consisting of a more or less closely coherent 
collocation of conscious particulars ; openly ignoring all 
extra-conscious implications, while tacitly making use 
of substantiality in the form of an identically enduring 
matrix of remembered experience, and of causative 
efficiency as an organically effective link between act- 
ual and remembered occurrences. His professed Non- 
substantialism turns out to be based on genuine sub- 
stantiality, and his professed inefficaciousness on 
effective organization. Facts of vital organization 
underlie all problems arising in the attempt to interpret 
the all-revealing conscious content. Whence and by 
what influences do the vivid impressions, and their ex- 
perienced connections, come to emerge into conscious 
awareness? This question of questions is left by 
Hume wholly untouched. 

Nevertheless, Hume assisted most effectively in 
revolutionizing the way of philosophically interpreting 
natural phenomena. He supplanted mere logical 



Causation 247 

deduction from ready-made premises, believed hitherto 
to be the primordial source of knowledge, by recogniz- 
ing on the contrary, and by causing to be recognized 
by leading thinkers, the real priority and import of 
sensorial experience as the indispensably given material 
of true knowledge. He showed that without actual 
sensorial experience no genuine system of knowledge 
can be established, that actual vivid sensorial experi- 
ence, inner and outer, has first to be gathered, before 
remembered representative ideas can possibly arise in 
consciousness. The vast and grave import of this 
experiential] interpretation, as radically opposed to 
mere logical deduction, was clearly recognized, by the 
scientifically disposed and keenly penetrative thought 
of Kant. Having been philosophically trained in pure 
conceptual ratiocination, believing the method of 
attaining knowledge to consist in the right use of the 
principles of formal logic, he was roused to the depths 
of his truth-seeking nature by becoming through 
Hume's influence convinced that all material upon 
which real knowledge is founded enters the mind exclu- 
sively through direct sensorial experience, and that, 
without such experience having accrued, no valid in- 
structive knowledge can be derived by means of mere 
logical deduction. "Synthetical propositions" are the 
indispensable foundation of all "analytical proposi- 
tions." All systems not founded on sense-given experi- 
ence, all previous metaphysics, therefore, can be but 
visionary and invalid. 

After this awakening from his "dogmatic slumber" 
Kant came almost entirely to agree with Hume's radi- 
cal Experientialism, though unaware of its purely 
idealistic character. On contemplating, however, 
seemingly insoluble problem of harmonizing the world 



248 Biological Solutions 

of sense with the world of thought, the " mundus sensi- 
bilis" with the " mundus intelligibilis ," he was led to 
share for a while the theistic Mysticism of Malebranche. 
Finally, he entered upon his critical period by recogniz- 
ing that space and time are forms of our own subjective 
intuition, wherein all sensorial affections enter and are 
received ; space being the form of our outer sense, time 
that of our inner sense. This view of the subjective 
inwardness of time and space-perception led soon to 
the discovery of what seemed to him of paramount 
importance ; namely, that mathematical constructions 
and operations within this subjective space and time 
yield a priori synthetical propositions ; that it is possi- 
ble, therefore, irrespective of all a posteriori sensorial 
experience to gain instructive a priori knowledge. 
Mathematical constructions and propositions are con- 
sequently results of a synthetical process a priori, 
not of a posteriori sensorial experience. This view 
seemed to explain the strange and signal certainty 
and universally binding validity of mathematical prop- 
ositions. 

On the strength of this discovery Kant concluded 
that our psychical being is in possession of a combining 
and constructing a priori faculty, and that all synthet- 
ical operations in conscious experience are the exclusive 
work of this faculty. The task now offered for solu- 
tion was to detect how the experiential sensorial mate- 
rial which comes to fill empty space and time, how this 
fractionally and randomly accruing material is influ- 
enced by the a priori combining and constructing fac- 
ulty. He found in conceptual cognition the sensorial 
raw-material of knowledge systematically combined in 
definite ways, while in direct experience it is received 
in unsynthetized and unsystematized confusion. Con- 



Causation 249 

sequently, so he argued, it must be the discovered a 
priori faculty that synthetizes and systematizes the 
random material of sense, constructing thereby the 
universally valid knowledge found in conceptual cogni- 
tion. 

Kant declared the faculty of understanding (Ver- 
stand) to be this agent that combines the loose material 
of sense into rationally consolidated order. In this 
view all rationally valid connection between sensorially 
experienced phenomena, the causative connection in- 
cluded, is brought about exclusively by this a priori 
faculty of our psychical being. Nature, being a system 
of connected experience, is therefore itself constructed 
or " made," as Kant expresses it, by the a priori faculty 
of "understanding." Lt evidently follows, that all 
valid and lasting connections, and all systematic order 
obtaining among natural appearances, are therewith 
established by agencies that have their seat within the 
exclusive compass of our individual mental being. 
Kant, like all former thinkers, becomes thus inextri- 
cably caught in the magic circle of pure idealistic Solip- 
sism, from which there is no legitimate escape, save 
in the recognition of the substantial, extra-conscious. 
power-endowed existence of that which is perceptually 
revealed as our living organism. Kant, it is true, recog- 
nized a world of extra-conscious things-in-themselves, 
and attributed to this inferred realm of transphenom- 
enal subsistence power to affect in definite ways our 
sensibilities, causing thereby definite sense-material to 
arise within subjective time and space. Hut although 
real forcible causation is here implied, Kant, like Hume. 

refrained from trying to explain how such causation 
by force of incommensurable, foreign, extra-conscious 
agencies can here take place; how an extra-conscious 



250 Biological Solutions 

thing-in-itself can give rise in another being to a definite 
conscious state. 

In opening this momentous question of causation in 
the introductory section, it was pointed out how Kant's 
profound and laborious attempt to discover the means 
by which nature and all its phenomenal appearances 
comes to be rationally constructed and conceived as a 
consistently systematized and unified body of know- 
ledge; how this keenly penetrative critical attempt 
failed, nevertheless, to throw any true light on the real 
problem of causation. Indeed, though intended ex- 
haustively to probe it, it hardly touched at all upon its 
real nature. It merely sought to show how our appre- 
hension of experientially received sensorial material, 
and its final systematized unification in conceptual 
apperception is brought about ; not how a definite occur- 
rence taking place in the ordered concatenation of the 
real existents that constitute nature is caused by a 
definite antecedent occurrence which necessarily draws 
with it as its effect a succeeding definite occurrence. 

Kant rightly recognizes that the sequence of flowing 
appearances in time must be the outcome of a perma- 
nent, force-endowed agent or substance. He says, as 
already quoted, " where there is action, and conse- 
quently activity and force, there is also substance ; and 
in it alone is to be sought the seat of the fruitful source 
of the appearances." Nothing could be more truly 
said and said to the point in this connection. The 
flow of the phenomenal appearances, which constitute 
the conscious content, must indeed issue from some 
force-endowed, substantial matrix. But where is this 
substantial seat of the fruitful source of conscious phe- 
nomena to be found ? Kant rightly recognizes that the 
two contradictory determinations of permanency and 



Causation 251 

change, " entgegengesetzte Bestimmungen," as he him- 
self calls them, have to be attributed to "substance." 
Now there is, as has been shown, only one existent in 
our world which is endowed with these contradictory 
attributes, and this is what has been here demonstrated 
to be the force-endowed, extra-conscious, ever active 
entity, which compels as a conscious revelation of itself 
what is perceived as the living organism. As a gen- 
uine substance, containing the issuing matrix of the 
conscious content, and, indeed, as actuating all vital 
functions, the living organism has preeminently to be 
considered a causative agent. This state of things is 
pregnant with consequences that cannot be reconciled 
either with idealistic views, or with the purely mechan- 
ical interpretation in which motion alone is a causative 
agent. The living being by force of its substantiality 
and its specific organization is a causative agent of a 
wholly hypermechanical kind. This weighty truth 
shall be presently further elucidated. 

Kant, ignoring altogether the important part the 
organism is playing in causation as a substantial agent, 
identifies the phenomena-issuing substance with the 
matter of natural science, whose "quantity neither in- 
creases nor diminishes." But with him this "matter" 
is not really the resistent, inert substance of mate- 
rialistic science, subsisting imperishably outside con- 
sciousness. It is "substantia phenomenon," something 
belonging to the phenomenal order, though conceived, 
nevertheless, as force-endowed and causative. This 
conception obviously involves a whole cluster of con- 
tradictions. To begin with. Kant's "matter" has no 
remotest resemblance to the matter of natural science, 
whose quantity has been experimentally shown neither 
to 11 1 nor to decrease. Instead of being inert. 



25 2 Biological Solutions 

Kant's material substance is preeminently active, for 
he declares it to be the fruitful source of all phenomena. 
But, it must be asked, how can something belonging 
itself to the phenomenal order be a force-endowed sub- 
stance, and the veritable cause of the whole phenomenal 
world of which it forms part ? And how can anything 
belonging to the phenomenal order be conceived as 
neither increasing nor diminishing in quantity ? Here 
Kant's thought became inextricably confused. He 
evidently seized upon the compelled percepts, which 
are generally taken to be material existents, bodies, or 
things, and declares their intimate consistency to be 
"substantia phenomenon," vaguely identifying it with 
the matter of natural science. As counterpart of the 
phenomenal world, he had the noumenal world in mind, 
and with it his dynamical theory of matter, in which 
dynamical forces are the real acting agents, that give 
rise to the material substance, which is here held to be 
the seat of the fruitful source of all appearances. If so, 
nature would not be made by the understanding as 
insisted upon in the " analytical logic," but would be 
the outcome of the phenomenal matter of the category 
of substantiality, whose ''quantity neither decreases 
nor diminishes," though it is the "seat of the fruitful 
source of all appearances." 

Under such a state of things, where all natural phe- 
nomena are caused by the activity of a definite substan- 
tial entity, there would evidently be no need for other 
causative agencies. But Kant, in order to accomplish 
the transformation of sensorial confusion and passivity 
into actively synthetized and apprehended order and 
unity, requires other causative agencies besides mere 
" substantia phenomenon." Leaving out of account the 
things-in-themselves, that are conceived as the active 



Causation 253 

agents which cause space and time to be filled with 
definite sensorial material ; leaving out of account also 
the agencies which cause the appearances to arise in 
certain empirical order in time and space, without which 
the objectifying categories would — as Kant himself 
positively states — be impotent to exercise their a 
priori function in relation to them; leaving all these 
interceding causative influences out of reckoning, there 
remains still the specific category of causation, which 
Kant makes to account for the necessary connection 
of successive phenomena, and therewith for all genuine, 
objectively valid causative changes in nature. Under 
this causative view it is after all not really -the sub- 
stantia phenomenon which is the true causative agent, 
but the a priori function of causative synthesis within 
the cognitive unity of apperception. For it alone fin- 
ally determines what phenomena are necessarily con- 
nected as cause and effect. 

Consequently, despite empirical apprehension and 
sensorially given material, it is with Kant in a realm 
of a priori cognitive apperception that the all-compris- 
ing, universally valid synthetical unity of thought and 
being in reality subsists. Xo wonder, then, that his 
"transcendental" idealism was at once converted into 
a "transcendent identity-philosophy" by his immedi- 
ate followers, and again by the Neo-Kantians of the 
present time. 

In contemplating Kant's attempt to solve the prob- 
lem of causation one may, enlightened by his profound 
penetration of its manifold complications, gain a 
glimpse of what philosophical and scientific inter- 
pretation have still to accomplish before an adequate 

solution is attained. It will lie- well, therefore, more 

explicitly t<> point out these perplexing complexities. 



254 Biological Solutions 

Kant recognizes that causation applies only to changes 
as they consecutively occur in time. An antecedent 
occurrence dwindles away by being seemingly changed 
into a different succeeding occurrence. As soon as the 
succeeding occurrence has completely emerged into 
actual appearance, the antecedent occurrence has com- 
pletely ceased to exist. This flow of succeeding changes 
Kant rightly concludes cannot arise out of nothing. It 
presupposes an extra-conscious, force-endowed sub- 
stance, which emits the changeful, perishing occur- 
rences as modes of its activity, while enduring itself 
unchanged or identical. " Bei allem Wechsel der 
Erscheinungen beharret die Substanz." The question 
now arises, how the succession of nothing but evanes- 
cent occurrences comes, nevertheless, to be collectively 
apprehended and enduringly gathered into an orderly 
system of objectively valid knowledge ? This is Kant's 
way of looking upon causation and necessary synthesis 
in general. 

The succession of changes flows by, from moment to 
moment, without leaving behind, as such, the least 
trace of their existence. This being the case, they 
have evidently to be collectively apprehended and 
their apprehension retained by an active and remem- 
bering faculty. This apprehending faculty, which 
with the help of " reproductive imagination" gathers 
together into simultaneous awareness the experienced 
phenomenal changes, exercises its function, however, 
likewise in consecutive moments of time. It can there- 
fore survey the stored-up content of reproductive imag- 
ination only by consecutively passing from one part of 
it to another. In this apprehending survey there is 
obviously no binding order. In surveying a " house," 
for instance, the survey may begin anywhere and end 



Causation i$S 

anywhere. Consequently, the further question arises, 
how it comes to pass that, nevertheless, definite ante- 
cedent occurrences are conceived as being necessarily 
followed by definite succeeding occurrences, that a 
definite cause is invariably connected with a definite 
effect. 

All this happening is believed by Kant to be taking 
place in individual or subjective consciousness. Where 
then does the objective necessity in the sequence of 
occurrences come from. It is obvious that an ante- 
cedent moment of time loses itself entirely in the suc- 
ceeding moment, which is thereby wholly determined 
by it. Consequently, the appearances it carries with 
it as its content wholly determine the changed appear- 
ances of the next moment. But time itself cannot be 
apprehended, only its freight of succeeding appear- 
ances is the object of apprehension. These appear- 
ances supplant each other successively. And their 
definite sequence in time must, then, evidently be neces- 
sitated by the definite activity of the underlying sub- 
stance which issues them into actual awareness. They 
therefore necessarily appear in definite order in sub- 
jective or empirical apprehension, because they are 
thus definitely determined in the realm of substantial 
existence. A "ship," for instance, is apprehended in 
an antecedent moment higher up the stream than in a 
succeeding moment. This order is binding and cannot 
be rationally reversed. But to be, moreover, recog- 
nized as conceptually established, or objectively and 
universally binding, it must, according to Kant, be 
ranged in this necessary order within the all-compre- 
hensive synthetical unity of apperception. And in 
Kant's words, "the concept which carries with it the 
necessity of synthetical unity can only be a pure con- 



^5 6 Biological Solutions 

cept of the understanding, such as is not contained in 
our (empirical) apprehension. It is here the concept 
of the relation of cause and effect, of which the former 
determines the latter in time as actual consequent, and 
not as something which merely precedes in imagina- 
tion." 

As already stated, by assuming that "the necessity 
of synthetic unity" dwells in an " a priori concept of 
the understanding," and therefore in a realm of psychi- 
cal efficiency transcending empirical experience, and 
underlying it; by arriving at this conclusion Kant's 
system, despite all his protestations to the contrary, 
becomes consistently a system of pure conceptual 
idealism. And with it the question of causation is 
transferred to inaccessible regions. 

Notwithstanding his manifold elaborate means of 
explaining causation, Kant feels that by conceiving 
all his complex machinery to be immanent in the con- 
scious individual and operative only in the phenomenal 
world, he has not yet reached the real fundamental 
causative substance, either in his " substantia phenom- 
enon " or in his category of causality. Finding himself 
a prisoner in the magic circle of pure Solipsism, every- 
thing within this mere subjective sphere is and can be 
only of phenomenal import, possessing in itself no en- 
during, force-endowed substantiality, and no objective 
or universal validity. His synthetic categories have 
closely examined no actuating power of their own. It 
is from the "synthetical unity of apperception" that 
in the system of "transcendental idealism" all actu- 
ation really irradiates. And this unity of apperception, 
where all knowledge is found systematically compre- 
hended and unified, belongs in Kant's view, not to the 
phenomenal world, but to pure universal reason, which 



Causation 257 

is conceived as having its seat in a super-phenomenal, 
" intelligible " world. Of this intelligible world our own 
real, essential being or " intelligible Ego " is said to form 
part. And it is from this higher noumenal region that 
the entire machinery of Kant's phenomenal world is 
set going, on the sensorial side by the noumenal things- 
in-themselves, and on the conceptual side by synthetical 
unity of apperception of the " Bewusztsein uberhaupt." 
In Kant's "Practical Reason" the intelligible Ego is 
explicitly declared to be endowed with free causative 
power capable of initiating definite modes of actuation 
manifest in the phenomenal world. 

In presence of the one actually and positively given 
fact ; namely, the flow and evanescence of all conscious 
phenomena as appearances in time, Kant did not hesi- 
tate to conclude that they must flow from a substan- 
tial, force-endowed, identically abiding source. He 
grounded this inference on the axiom so frequently 
resorted to by ancient philosophers, and from whose 
potent authority the physicists of the present day 
derive the supreme and eminently serviceable principle 
of their science, the principle of the "Conservation of 
Energy." Kant adopts it, as he himself says, from the 
"ancients" under the form, " Gigni de nihilo nihil, in 
nihilum nihil posse reverti" 

It being certain that we are actually aware of nothing 
but our own conscious content, this conscious content 
with all its changeful appearances cannot arise out 
of nothing, cannot be self-caused. Consequently, so 
Kant rightly argues, there must exist an underlying 
actuating substance which causes these conscious ap- 
pearances to emerge into aetual awareness. S< i tar no 
difficulty is apparent. Bui it is an evident fact that 
the entire conscious content, being a content of time 



258 Biological Solutions 

wherever it may come from, does actually revert into 
nothing. It is clear, then, that the second part of the 
grounding axiom, il in nihilum nil posse reverti" proves 
to be nowise applicable to conscious phenomena. 
These flow continuously out of existence, and must, 
therefore, be as continuously renewed from "the seat 
of the fruitful source of all appearances," which must 
have its existence in a realm of extra-conscious sub- 
sistence. 

Right here the ever-perplexing knot of philosophical 
and scientific interpretation has to be untied, and the 
tangled skein of intra-conscious and extra-conscious 
existence; of forceless, evanescent appearances, and 
force-endowed, enduring entities, intelligibly unrav- 
eled, before this strangely complex state of intermin- 
gling disparate things Can be correctly understood . First 
of all it is of utmost importance to recognize that the 
grounding axiom cannot either way be applied to a 
world of purely ideal consistency, for psychical phe- 
nomena are all transient appearances, and can there- 
fore not arise out of anything known as psychical. The 
source of the flow of psychical phenomena must be 
obviously extra -conscious, and therewith non -psychical. 
The forceless, perishing conscious phenomena of an 
antecedent moment cannot themselves in any way 
cause the existence and appearance of the phenomena 
of the succeeding moment. Consequently, the phe- 
nomena of the antecedent, as well as those of the 
succeeding moments of time, have necessarily to be 
conceived as being caused to arise, and this in what- 
ever order they appear, by force of a continual activity 
of an underlying non -psychical substantial entity, 
which remains itself identical or unspent amid the 
flow of conscious appearances and their changes ema- 



Causation 259 

nating from it. As repeatedly stated, in vain has philos- 
ophy searched for such a substantial entity from its 
earliest beginnings up to the present time. For no 
existent was recognized in nature or anywhere within 
ken of human awareness and cognition that could be 
logically conceived as remaining itself identical while 
undergoing and manifesting changes. And yet such 
an existent was necessitated in order to account for 
the phenomena of the all-revealing conscious content. 

This perennial dilemma of identity amid change, 
logically' incomprehensible, is positively found over- 
come in nature by the demonstrable fact, that what is 
perceptually revealed as the organism is the very sub- 
stance sought for by philosophy ; a substance, namely, 
which remains itself essentially identical, while being 
"the seat of the fruitful source of all appearances." 
There is no other such substance in our world. Intui- 
tively it has long been recognized as the bearer of the 
conscious content. But how this could possibly be 
the case has remained philosophically and scientifically 
unintelligible. Hence multifold philosophical systems, 
all virtually bent on accounting for the origin and sig- 
nificance of what is revealed in the conscious content, 
this being the only source of actual awareness and 
direct information. 

The problem of causation, inextricably connected 
with extra -conscious as well as intra-conscious exist- 
ence, can evidently be solved neither by the method of 
Hume, nor by that of Kant, nor by looking in any way 
for the bond of causative connection as being estab- 
lished and obtaining between the conscious phenomena 
themselves. Conscious phenomena — and all phe- 
nomena actually and directly known are conscious 
phenomena — issue from their extra-conscious matrix 



160 Biological Solutions 

into actual awareness in preestablished order and com- 
bination. Percepts are often considered to be formed 
by a definite combination of specific sensations; if so, 
then, this combination must have been effected organi- 
cally in the extra-conscious matrix, whence the estab- 
lished product issues ready-made into actual awareness. 
On mere momentary sensorial incitement percepts, im- 
plicitly signifying a wide range of former experience, 
start from their all-comprising matrix into instant 
awareness. If, moreover, a definite phenomenon or 
conscious state is invariably or generally followed by 
another definite phenomenon or conscious state, then 
again this so-called causative connection, or this actual 
association, must have been preestablished in the extra- 
conscious matrix, as the entire complex phenomenon 
issues thus connectedly ordered into actual awareness. 

The problem of efficient causation is nowise directly 
involved in the ordered procession of phenomena or 
conscious states themselves, as they appear in actual 
awareness. It comes to the front when the cognitive 
import and objective validity, together with the defi- 
nitely established order of perceptual and other psychic 
phenomena, are recognized as the essential questions to 
be answered. 

To pure Idealism, dealing with nothing but psychical 
or consciously known states, the problem of causation 
does not really exist. The quasi-causal order of 
Hume's vivid impressions and their faintly remem- 
bered ideas is brought about by means of surreptitiously 
assumed extra-conscious agencies. For habitual se- 
quence presupposes reproductive memory having its 
seat in an extra-conscious matrix, wherein the order 
to be reproduced has become organically established 
and through whose agency the ordered phenomena 



Causation 261 

issue as such into actual awareness. As to conceptual 
Idealism, which reaches its culmination in Panlogism, 
it has to assume the complete preestablished order of 
all phenomena in their totality as content of a preexist- 
ing, all-comprehending Absolute ; and to assume, more- 
over, the efficient phenomena-producing agency of the 
substantialized concepts entering into the all-inclusive 
logical system. This conceptual air-castle is built with 
no other material than the philosopher's own idealized 
conscious experience, consisting as such of nothing but 
forceless, ephemeral conscious states. Who wishes to 
become fully convinced of the truth of this assertion 
need only look into the arbitrary and wildly fantastic 
conceptual constructions of the "Young-Hegelians," 
and indeed of those of the master himself. Our indi^ 
vidual experience received in preestablished racial 
molds, and gathered from nature and social intercourse, 
guided thereby by traditional ways of wholly inade- 
quate interpretation, becomes, indeed, more or less 
logically systematized within us racially developed and 
socially thinking beings, so as to form a somewhat con- 
sistent body of knowledge due to progressive culture, 
and practically serviceable for the time being. But 
it is surely a scholastic delusion of conceptually trained 
thinkers to believe that their conceptual systems arc 
in the remotest degree expressive of absolute truth, or 
merely of truth as alone attainable, gradually, by close 
investigation of natural phenomena. 

To reach the sphere of efficient causation the given 
psychic phenomena of the conscious content have to 
be transcended by recognizing their extra -conscious 
implications and significations. Kant distinctly felt 
that in accounting for true causation subjective experi- 
ence had to be transcended. But he had no sound 



262 Biological Solutions 

epistemology to offer, justifying escape from the 
charmed circle of Solipsism, in which his critical thought 
became wholly entrapped. He had cut off all revealing 
communication with the perceptible universe, enclos- 
ing himself in a thought-woven cocoon of intricate 
texture, from which he believed he could ultimately 
emerge, as the transfigured, spaceless, timeless "intelli- 
gible Ego," which he all along held to be his veritable 
being. Bent on solving the epistemological problem, 
with its causative implication, Kant actually eliminated 
it from his system of critical Idealism. By declaring 
the imperceptibility of the perceptible world, which 
trans-sensorial, trans-phenomenal world he held to con- 
sist of unperceived and wholly unknowable things-in- 
themselves, whose characteristics are nowise revealed 
in the vivid, minutely figured percepts, which they 
arouse in sensorial awareness; by dint of this funda- 
mental misconception he was thrown back entirely 
into the sphere of pure subjective Solipsism. The rela- 
tion of cognition to an extra-conscious perceptible 
world being thus denied, no other task seemed to re- 
main but to find out how his passively received senso- 
rial material, which falls somehow already formed and 
specifically constituted into empty space and time ; how 
it is then cognitively apprehended, and its experienced 
order rendered objectively valid. 

Now, as the conscious content, which contains all we 
are at all aware of, issues ready-made from its extra - 
conscious matrix, it is clear that whatever synthetical 
and cognitive elaboration sense-stimulated material has 
received must necessarily have been imparted to it 
within the extra-conscious matrix, from which the 
synthetically and cognitively elaborated product issues 
full-fashioned into awareness. This fashioning and 



Causation 263 

sustaining extra-conscious matrix has been here episte- 
mologically demonstrated to form part of what is per- 
ceptually revealed as the living organism. And the 
consciousness which it potentially harbors has been 
organically elaborated in ceaseless phyletic interaction 
with the outside world, and has significance only for the 
life of its actual bearer. Consequently, what Kant 
believed to be accomplished by his imposing array of 
psychical faculties is in reality accomplished by the 
creative activity of vital organization, through whose 
agency has been phyletically or productively developed 
the human race with all its innate endowments, and 
through which human individuals embodying these 
racial endowments, psychical as well as physical, are 
reproductively developed from generation to genera- 
tion. Kant's problem is therefore fundamentally one 
of vital organization and not of mental a priori facul- 
ties. vSynthetical elaboration is not due to efficient 
agencies attaching to anything forming part of the 
conscious content, not to anything of psychical consis- 
tency, but to the all-efficient vital travail underlying it. 
In an examination of Kant's "Critique" the present 
writer came to the conclusion, as long as thirty- five 
wars ago, that " necessary connection of the sensorial 
manifold is due to a physiological, not to a logical activ- 
ity." l And after having devoted many more years to 
the investigation of vital phenomena, he became all 
the more confirmed that here the question is not, " How 
arc synthetical judgments a priori possible?" The ques- 
tion is, "How arc synthetical sensations and volitions 
organically possible? ,,a To enter into an explanation 

1 " Die Kant'sche Erkenntnisslehre widerlegt," etc., 1871, p, in. 

> " The Dependei >• t.-ili 1 >- on Specific I Mind," 



264 Biological Solutions 

of true causation, the right to do so has to be gained 
by an epistemology that justifies the intuitional belief 
in the real existence of an external world as vividly 
revealed in perceptual awareness. Only then are we 
in a position to recognize the astounding complexity 
of the genuine problem of efficient causation; efficient 
causation as operative in organic and in inorganic 
nature, and in their many modes of interaction. 

How does it happen that percepts arising full fash- 
ioned from their matrix within the apprehending sub- 
ject reveal the presence and characteristics of existents 
subsisting independently of being perceived, and which 
compel the revealing percepts to arise within conscious- 
ness by mere dynamical modes of stimulation, mostly 
through the instrumentality of intervening agencies? 
How does it happen that the definite determinations 
of our subjective time and space-awareness congruently 
coincide with those of objective time and space; an 
all-important fact evinced by their congruent corrobo- 
ration by all percipients of the same kind ; a fact which 
insures the objective and universal validity of space 
and time-determinations, and therewith the possibility 
of an exact physical science. And by what means are 
these causative relations, as consciously apprehended, 
organically incorporated in the living being? These 
are essential questions involved in real efficient causa- 
tion. And it is obvious that they can be answered 
only by taking facts of productive and reproductive 
vital organization into account. 1 

1 See " Causation and its Organic Conditions," " Mind," 1882. 



IV. SUBSTANTIALITY AND CAUSATION IN 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE 

Physics, taken as the science of what perceptually 
appears, encounters in its search after genuine substan- 
tiality and causation all the perplexities brought to 
light by philosophical exploration. And although it 
makes sundry attempts to discover that which in the 
fleeting panorama of changeful appearances is substan- 
tially enduring, and to ascertain how physical occur- 
rences come to be causatively connected, it has hitherto 
utterly failed, and finds itself reduced to pure visual 
Phenomenalism. For, undeniably, its immediate ob- 
ject of investigation is a mere visual phenomenon aris- 
ing in individual consciousness. This being so, it is 
instructive to examine how such nature-depleting solip- 
sistic outcome of exact science is brought about. It 
will be found to be mainly due to a deficient theory i >f 
knowledge. 

Physics makes, to begin with, short work with the 
perennial perplexities attaching to the search after gen- 
uine substantiality and causation. And it must be 
admitted, that this short cut towards scientific inter- 
pretation has proved to be of great advantage to phys- 
ics, when the aim is simply to measure interdependent 
states and changes obtaining among the objects with 
which it is concerned. These objects are seen to occupy 
definite relative positions in space, and to move inter- 
dependent^ in definite directions with greater and 
smaller velocity, traversing Spatial distances in more 

265 



266 Biological Solutions 

or less time ; also to undergo changes in their configu- 
ration, and to suffer commotion or agitation of their 
constituent elements. The investigation of these sun- 
dry modes of space occupancy and of motion, their 
exact measurement, and the recognition of the invari- 
able regularities thereby followed, are the facts and 
operations considered to constitute physical science. 

One of the most familiar and seemingly most simple 
experience in the physical world is the mass-motion of 
bodies. The general ways and laws according to which 
it takes place are ascertained by the special science of 
theoretical mechanics, which science is held to form the 
groundwork upon which the interpretation of the more 
complex physical phenomena has to be based. And 
here it is the theory of atomic mechanics that for the 
last two centuries, until quite lately, has principally 
done service in the explanation of physical phenomena, 
and which up to the present time has been essentially 
relied upon. This eminently helpful theory operates 
with two entirely disparate entities: matter and mo- 
tion; both considered as substantial, indestructible 
entities. To their presence and interaction everything 
in physical nature is then taken to owe its existence. 
Bodies inorganic and organic are thus held to consist 
of inert, unchangeable material elements, which are 
made to aggregate into definite configurations, and to 
be otherwise actuated by modes of motion. 

In the physical world nothing is visibly perceived 
but bodily forms at rest or in motion and commotion 
accompanied by more or less changing configurations 
and qualitative distinctions. Under this view, bodies 
consisting of aggregates of inert material atoms are 
considered mere passive vehicles actuated by motion, 
which is declared to be the one exclusive agent that 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 267 

forcibly causes all changes manifest in the physical 
world. It is clear that motion, in order to move inert 
bodily masses, has to be conceived as a force-endowed 
entity. It is therefore "motion" as moving force 
that plays the actuating part in atomic mechanics. 
Motion, however, is something eminently visible, while 
force is something wholly invisible. Now if motion is 
really identical with the force that moves inert masses, 
how can it be something visible? It becomes, indeed, 
quite unintelligible how motion, conceived as a sepa- 
rately existing and therewith invisible entity, actuat- 
ing ab extra ponderable masses, can possibly be the 
same thing as the visible motion we are familiar with. 
The truth is, we know motion only inseparably con- 
joined with moving masses, and the resulting forcible 
effects are always the work of moving masses, and never 
of motion alone. Motion, apparently an eminently 
visible phenomenon, is obviously visible only as moving 
masses or moving elements of masses. Yet material- 
istic physicists declare it to be a separate, inde- 
structible, force-endowed entity : transferable from one 
mass to another, or distributable among many masses, 
without suffering diminution or augmentation of its 
quantity. Conceived as detachable from mass, and, 
imagined as independently existing, what is here called 
u motion " is evidently a merely inferred something, of 
which we have no direct sensible experience. And it 
is really to this merely inferred something, and not to 
what is visible as motion, that atomic mechanics attrib- 
utes the force or power to actuate inert masses. The 
motion we actually perceive, and which as such is insep- 
arable from the mass to which it is attached, has here 
to be consistently looked upon as being itself only a 

visible effect of what is inferentially conceived as an 



268 Biological Solutions 

imponderable force or agent, capable not only of im- 
parting motion to masses, but capable also of produc- 
ing all perceptible changes in and among masses. 

When the forcible physical effects are believed by 
physicists to be the work of an efficient immaterial 
agent, capable of assuming different qualitative guises 
in passing from one inert mass into another, then this 
motion and change-effecting agent becomes what under 
the name of " energy" is playing a most important and 
fruitful part in physical science. But here a serious 
discrepancy comes to light as irreconcilably obtaining 
between atomic mechanics and energetics. For that 
which moves and actuates the inert masses of atomic 
mechanics is necessarily always energy of an active or 
kinetic kind. When the inert masses, or their inert 
constituent elements, are not actually moved or ener- 
gized, they must be, of course, wholly devoid of energy, 
and can therefore nowise be, nevertheless, bearers of 
latent or potential energy, as assumed in energetics. 
In the world of atomic mechanics there can exist only 
kinetic energy. There is no resting place in it for latent 
or potential energy. Yet, without the assumption of 
such energy, energetics is impotent to make sense out 
of given phenomena. There must evidently be some- 
thing essentially wrong, either with atomic mechanics 
or with energetics, or with both these theories or modes 
of interpretation, when they are offered as valid expla- 
nations of the given facts, and not merely as conven- 
ient conceptual devices for facilitating the grasp of 
uniformities and interdependences in the perplexing 
entanglement of changeful phenomena. 

"Energy" is virtually declared by physicists to be 
an all-efficient indestructible entity, appearing under 
manifold qualitative guises, and capable of performing 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 269 

every kind of work in nature, without ever spending 
itself in so doing. For its quantity is said to remain 
measurably undiminished, despite all the work it 
performs and all the transformations it undergoes. 
Surely nothing can be more strangely wonderful than 
this inexhaustible all-efficiency of one and the same 
amount of energy. In contemplating this widely 
accepted scientific doctrine a strong suspicion arises 
that physics has landed us here unawares amid the 
magic doings of fairyland, where nothing is impossible. 
That there is some serious fallacy involved in the cur- 
rent conception of energy seems highly probable to 
mere logical intuition. Otherwise energetics, instead 
of demonstrating the impossibility of perpetual motion, 
would itself introduce into nature the most stupendous 
work-performing perpetuum mobile imaginable. For, 
after accomplishing all the work in the world, its work- 
performing capacity would still remain an undimin- 
ished quantity. It is rightly insisted upon in physics, 
no less than in mathematics, as a fundamental axiom, 
that a quantity which is spent in an operation cannot 
be rationally conceived as, nevertheless, enduring in 
undiminished efficacy. Yet this is exactly what is 
believed to be the case with energy. It is cither held 
to be transformed undiminished into the changes to 
which it gives rise; or masses that have spent their 
kinetic energy in performing work are declared, never- 
theless, to retain the same amount of energy in a latent 
or potential stale, ready to be respent on a future occa 
sion. When a descended pendulum, for example, has 

spent, its kinetic energy in re-lifting its weight againsl 
gravity, it is declared to retain, nevertheless, this spent 
energy undiminished as potential energy, which is then 

respent ill its downward course, and SO on, time after 



270 Biological Solutions 

time, kinetic energy being each time converted into po- 
tential energy, which is reconverted into kinetic energy. 

Physical energy, like physical motion, or like any 
other substantially posited entity, conceived as effect- 
producing or work-performing agency, and declared to 
remain identical and unimpaired, despite ever so much 
expenditure of efficiency and variety of manifestations; 
such a conception of an all-efficient, never worn out 
factotum is rationally considered even more unthink- 
able in physics than in philosophy, where it has like- 
wise served to explain almost everything. It is safe 
to say that there can exist no such substantial entity 
as energy is conceived to be; an entity, namely, that 
is spending most lavishly its quantitative efficacy and 
yet retaining it undiminished. Ground axiom of all 
reasoning has ever been, ex nihilo nihil fit. 

The plausible reasoning employed by energetics, a 
reasoning which entangles physical science in a maze 
of misconceptions, maintains that energy as effect- 
producing cause is wholly transformed in undiminished 
amount into the effect it produces, and that this effect 
becomes in its turn the cause of a subsequent equiva- 
lent effect, and so on. J. R. Mayer says: "Forces are 
causes — causa cequat effectum. If the cause c has the 
effect e, then c = e; if, in its turn, e is the cause of a 
second effect /, we have e = f. This first property of 
all causes we call their indestructibility. If the given 
cause c has produced an effect e equal to itself, it has 
in that very act ceased to be, c has become e. Ac- 
cordingly, since c becomes e and e becomes /, etc., we 
must regard these various magnitudes as different 
forms under which one and the same object makes its 
appearance. The capability of assuming various forms 
is the second essential property of all causes. Taking 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 271 

both properties together, we may say, causes are (quan- 
titatively; indestructible and (qualitatively) convertible 
objects." 

The masses into which the effect-producing cause or 
energy is believed to slip in and out, transforming itself 
into the different effects it produces, are under this 
theory necessarily conceived to be themselves mere 
inert vehicles in all these amazing visible transforma- 
tions on the part of an invisible agent, whose existence 
is only inferred from perceptible effects. Changes 
occurring in the position and constitution of masses 
are undoubtedly equivalent to that which produces 
them. But what is it that really produces them? 
Certainly nothing in the remotest degree resembling the 
indestructible, all-efficient entity conceived under the 
name of "energy." 

Here physical science is in fact brought to a per- 
plexing standstill, and only a sound epistemology can 
rescue it from becoming reduced to the pure solipsistic 
Phenomenalism already theoretically reached by the 
out-and-out mathematical physicists. For in actual 
conscious awareness — the only direct awareness we have 
of anything — an antecedent phenomenon is seemingly 
transformed into the succeeding phenomenon by wholly 
passing over into it. Here c becomes actually e. The 
former phenomenon vanishes out of existence in meas- 
ure as the latter makes its appearance. This is what 
is immediately experienced as consciously occurring. 
Now, if we conclude therefrom that the antecedent 
phenomenon is itself the effective cause of the succeed- 
ing phenomenon, becoming thereby completely trans- 
formed into it, we thereby attribute to what is actually 
conscious in the present moment the power of causa- 
tively producing what will be consciously perceived in 



272 Biological Solutions 

the next moment. This, consistently carried out, 
would amount to a new-production from moment to 
moment of all that consciously appears ; a view actually 
held by some philosophers. The content of a preceding 
moment of time would then be the efficient or produc- 
tive cause of that of the succeeding moment, into which, 
under this aspect, it is seemingly transformed. By 
taking thus what in individual consciousness directly 
appears to be self-subsistent and pow r er-endowed, ex- 
clusive psychical causation and pure solipsistic Phe- 
nomenalism are then the consistent outcomes. 

When, on the other hand, as is usually done without 
epistemological warrant, it is taken for granted that 
that which consciously appears to percipient individuals 
has an extra-conscious material existence; and it is 
therefrom inferred by energetics, that the changes 
consciously experienced are the work of an all-efficient 
protean agent, which seizes upon the mere aggregates 
of inert atoms, coercing them ab extra into all the 
changeful appearances known as physical nature ; when 
this at present dominant view is taken, then, undeni- 
ably, a mere fictitious, imperceptible agent is hypo- 
thetically endowed with all-efficiency, opposed in its 
performances only by the inertia or resistance to change 
of position on the part of the perceptible masses, as- 
sumed to be composed of inert particles. Such an all- 
efficient factotum is preeminently the "energy" of 
energetics, when conceived as an indestructible agent, 
whose various forms are interconvertible ; an agent that 
performs all the work in nature with undiminished 
efficacy, and that, moreover, imparts to all material 
aggregates their sense-apparent, qualitative distinc- 
tions. 

Neglecting for the present the profoundly essential 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 273 

epistemological implications here necessarily involved, 
even then the theory of the conservation of energy can 
be shown to be a radically erroneous conception. 
Masses occupying definite relative positions in space 
may at a certain time find themselves so disposed to- 
wards one another, that tensions or stresses are existing 
among them, which on release become operative, giving 
then rise to the production of a definite amount of 
kinetic energy capable of performing an equivalent 
amount of work. A mass uplifted against the resist- 
ance of gravity, a spring bent against the resistance of 
elasticity, a mass expanded against the resistance of 
cohesion — such disequilibrated masses have in this 
forced position, when allowed to follow again their free 
bent, the power of developing kinetic energy and of 
performing work. But the energy once spent exists 
no more. It is nowise and nowhere conserved as 
an undiminished quantity. New equivalent external 
energy has to be applied in order to restore the advan- 
tage of position, wherefrom new amounts of kinetic 
energy may be developed and new work performed. 

When it is maintained, that mechanical work can be 
equivalently transformed into heat, and that this same 
heat can, under favorable conditions, be again equiva- 
lently reconverted into mechanical energy; that, there- 
fore, modes of energy are interconvertible, and energy 
consequently indestructible, the flaw in this interpre- 
tation of the actually observable facts is readily ex- 
posed. The external application of a certain amount 
of mechanical energy to a mass gives rise to the devel- 
opment of an equivalent amount of energy within the 
mass, called "heat." Thereby a certain tension or 

S against cohesion is established. This operation 

places the mass in a definite state of advantage as 



274 Biological Solutions 

regards its capacity of performing work. An iron bar, 
for example, expanded by heating, and suitably fast- 
ened at both ends to a ruptured wall, becomes on con- 
traction capable of performing the work of bringing 
together the two separated parts of the wall. The 
work is here evidently performed by the heat-expanded 
mass tending to reassume its normal state of cohesive 
equilibrium. In this process the amount of externally 
applied energy is spent in establishing the state of ten- 
sion against cohesion, and it is the release from this 
state of tension which allows the expanded mass to 
develop the kinetic energy of cohesive recon traction, 
capable of performing work. In performing the work 
this special amount of kinetic energy is likewise spent 
and nowise conserved. In order to reestablish the ten- 
sion from which new work can be performed a new 
application of external energy is required. Always, 
if new work has to be performed, new energy has to be 
brought to bear. An equilibrated state of masses, and 
of constituent elements of masses, can contain no latent 
energy, and can of itself develop none in this position. 
Energy is newly developed during equilibration of for- 
cibly disequilibrated masses. And in performing work 
an amount of energy equivalent to the work performed 
is irretrievably spent and vanished out of existence. 

These general preliminary remarks may at present 
suffice to indicate that there is something radically 
wrong in the conception of energy as generally accepted. 
This will clearly appear on further consideration. 
What is called the principle of the conservation of 
energy is in fact but another expression of the ancient 
dilemma contained in the conception of substance in 
general, as something that gives rise to changeful phe- 
nomena, while remaining itself identically unimpaired — 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 275 

a state of things logically unthinkable and actually 
impossible. 

Atomic mechanics, and its modern offspring "ener- 
getics," are consistent outcomes of the assumption of 
inert material particles, being the real elements that 
constitute perceptible, ponderable bodies or masses. 
The real existence of such inert matter granted, all 
actuation in physical nature must necessarily be im- 
posed upon the inert masses from without by some 
immaterial, force-endowed agent, such as physical 
science conceives motion and energy to be. 

It is important to recognize that the exactness of 
physical science, and its mathematical treatment, de- 
pend entirely on rigorously exact measurement. And 
this can take place only with the help of some kind of 
visible scales applied to visible objects and occurrences. 
The art of physical research consists mainly in discov- 
ering measurable signs for definite physical activities, 
and of devising and using instruments by means of 
which these signs can be accurately measured. The 
search for visible signs of physical processes, and the 
delicate art of exactly measuring their gradations when 
discovered, is an occupation which requires on the part 
of physical investigators the utmost ingenuity and ap- 
plication , evidenced by the formidable array of subtilly 
constructed apparatus, and volumes of mathematical 
equations. Physics is thus essentially a science of per- 
ceptible phenomena as revealed in terms of visibility. 
Vision is, however, only one among other endowments 
of the organic individual. Physical science, then, al- 
though it interprets nature as revealed by our most 
comprehensive and most accurate sense, can directly 
yield knowledge only as derived from what becomes 
consciously manifest as visual appearances. It can, 



276 Biological Solutions 

therefore, afford no exhaustive apprehension of natural 
phenomena. 

In order to avoid the impression, that the criticism 
of the present interpretation of perceptible occurrences 
here attempted is meant to depreciate in the least the 
vast import of mechanical and physical science, and 
the signal service they have rendered to social progress 
and culture, let it be emphatically acknowledged, that 
by positively ascertaining through exact extensive and 
intensive measurements the distinctions and concatena- 
tions actually and invariably obtaining between the 
phenomena of the perceptible world and their manifold 
changes ; that by such laborious research the conception 
of nature has been transformed for the benefit of man- 
kind from a terror-haunted arena for the exercise of 
capricious activities on the part of malevolent and 
benevolent powers; transformed under dissipation of 
all manner of superstitions into an undeviatingly 
ordered cosmos, in which our life on this terrestrial 
globe may now pursue, nature-informed, a rational 
course, freed from the imaginative apprehension of 
willful interference from any extraneous source what- 
ever. 

Masses are more or less distinctly visible, and occupy 
definite stretches of space. They possess, however, 
also other properties, of which, besides direct visibility, 
actual tangibility is mechanically one of the most im- 
portant. It testifies with certainty to a more or less 
intensive pressure-resisting and pressure-imparting 
power, which in various ways plays a significant part 
in mechanical occurrences. This eminently character- 
istic power attaching to bodily masses, when manifest 
here on earth in downward pressure or so-called gravi- 
tation, is rendered practically measurable by visible 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 277 

gradations on weighing scales, whereby its determinate 
rate of efficacy is disclosed in relation to the entire 
terrestrial globe. Such direct weighing of masses 
yields, however, constant quantities only when car- 
ried on at the same spot. For weight-pressure depends 
on the relative quantities of the masses to be weighed 
against each other, and on the spatial distance they 
occupy in relation to one another. It is, therefore, a 
variable quantity. The pressure-resisting and pressure- 
imparting power of bodies is found to be a property 
they possess independent of their weight or special 
relation to the terrestrial globe, and directly depend- 
ent on the quantity of what is mechanically called 
their mass, which mass is something visible and tangi- 
ble, and yet difficult to define, on account of its being 
in reality the bearer of manifold potential qualities. 

The mass of a body suspended, and relieved thereby 
of its weight, offers still resistance to being moved, and 
when in motion resistance to this motion being accel- 
erated, or to its being stopped. This occurrence is 
evidently due to a property itself invisible and only 
tactually revealed. The amount of resistance to being 
moved or accelerated affords a measure for the amount 
of mass involved in the process. And the amount of 
resistance to being stopped when in motion depends 
on the amount of the moving mass and the kinetic 
energy it embodies. Contrary to pure Phenomenalism 
it requires something efficacious to set masses in motion. 
and a further application of this efficacious something, 
generally called force, to accelerate the motion. And 
it requires again something just as efficacious to retard 
the motion, and more of it to entirely stop it. This 
something, called force, is directly and forcibly experi- 
enced and exerted by the investigator through mus- 



278 Biological Solutions 

cular push or pull applied to resistant masses. It is 
visibly embodied in a moving mass, which imparts 
motion and acceleration to another mass, that in colli- 
sion with a third mass suffers thereby retardation or 
cessation of its motion. But here, as merely visually 
experienced, the pressure, resistance, and embodiment 
of force or energy on the part of masses is only inferred 
to exist, and not actually felt, as it is by means of touch. 
In the perceptual sphere of pure vision the bodies ap- 
pearing therein, consisting, as such, only of definite 
modes of space consciousness, neither press, nor resist, 
nor embody anything like force. Hence the imma- 
terial, forceless Phenomenalism of pure visual physics, 
as mathematically formulated. 

A mass falling to the earth acquires thereby increas- 
ing increments of pressure-imparting power or kinetic 
energy corresponding to the height of the fall. This 
remarkable, and it may be added enigmatical occur- 
rence, may be considered the central experiential 
datum, upon which the theoretical structure of me- 
chanics is erected. It presupposes on the one side 
that a uniformly acting invisible force imparts accel- 
erating motion or velocity to the falling mass ; and, on 
the other side, it discloses that the falling mass acquires 
thereby an increasing invisible power, manifest only 
in the growing velocity becoming perceptible in rela- 
tion to other masses ; a power by means of which it is 
rendered capable of performing actual perceptible work 
upon other masses, causing them to undergo changes 
of various kinds. 

It is, moreover, found that a falling mass, which has 
acquired thereby a definite store of kinetic energy, if 
prevented from actually falling upon the earth, as is 
the case with a pendulum, that it then spends its invis- 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 279 

ibly accumulated kinetic energy in performing work 
against the force which is drawing or pushing it towards 
the earth. It visibly performs this work by lifting its 
own weight to nearly the same height from which it 
started to fall, spending thereby its entire amount of 
kinetic energy. It cannot be rationally expected to 
lift its weight to a greater height than that from which 
it fell, for where would the additional energy required 
come from? The experienced circle of occurrences 
here presented proves that the invisible efficacious 
something attaching to a mass in motion is capable of 
performing in connection with it an amount of work 
equivalent on the one hand to the velocity of the mass 
acquired during its fall, embodying therewith an 
amount of kinetic energy, gradually accruing, and to 
all appearance newly produced. On the other hand, 
this developed kinetic energy is nearly equivalent at 
the lowest point of the fall of the pendulum to the 
energy that originally raised its mass to the spatial 
point of downward departure; nearly equivalent be- 
cause of the retarding influence of friction at its point 
of suspension ; a factor which plays an important part 
in the occurrence. For, ever so much diminished, 
friction inevitably brings at last the pendulum to a 
standstill. Friction consumes energy like all other 
action against resistance, and energy can no more per- 
form work without being spent, can no more be itself 
a perpetuum mobile, than any other second-hand work- 
ing power. 

Righl here the fundamental error in the current 
conception of energy, as an indestructible entity that 
preserves its identity and quantity unimpaired amid 
the changes to which it is held to give rise —right here 
this fundamental error in the theory of the eons< 



280 Biological Solutions 

tion of energy becomes evident on close scrutiny. A 
pendulum acquires a certain amount of kinetic energy 
during its fall towards the earth. It spends this entire 
amount of energy in lifting its own weight against the 
resistance of gravity and friction to nearly the height 
from which it fell. How, then, can this same amount 
of energy, wholly spent against gravity and friction, 
be, nevertheless, — as generally alleged, — found con- 
served in undiminished quantity as " potential energy " ? 
This is clearly impossible. A quantity of something 
spent by any agent whatever cannot remain an undi- 
minished identical possession of such agent. And yet 
it is maintained by leading physicists, that the kinetic 
energy of the rising pendulum, though spent in lifting 
its weight against the resistance of gravity, has been 
actually converted in undiminished quantity into 
potential energy, and that during its renewed fall this 
potential energy becomes reconverted into kinetic 
energy, and so on. The conclusion therefrom is, that 
the assumed entity, called ''energy," is identically 
conserved as an indestructible work-performing agent. 
Now the real state of things is quite otherwise, and 
very obvious. The pendulum lifts its own small weight 
against the comparatively enormous power of terres- 
trial gravity. This power steadily counteracts and 
finally arrests the upward motion of the pendulum; 
whereupon, instantly, this same preponderant power 
draws the weight of the pendulum downwards again, 
during which fall an entirely new amount of kinetic 
energy becomes developed. This is obviously what 
really occurs, and the conception of a mutual conver- 
sion of kinetic into potential and of potential into 
kinetic energy is a pure fiction. The entire energy 
acquired during the fall of the mass is in relifting it 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 281 

unambiguously spent against gravity, and has as such 
vanished out of existence. During the next fall it is 
altogether newly produced by the accelerating influence 
of the same gravity against which it spent its former 
accumulated kinetic energy. Gravity is, in fact, an 
inexhaustible source of actuation, capable of impart- 
ing ever so often new kinetic energy to ever so manv 
falling masses. 

When a weight is lifted by the external application 
of energy to a certain height, as is the case with the 
pendulum when first started, it is maintained consist- 
ently with the principle of the conservation of energy, 
that this externally applied kinetic energy is converted 
into the potential energy of position, and that it is 
this same potential energy which during the fall of 
the weight is reconverted into kinetic energy. Here the 
influence of gravity is evidently lost sight of. As the 
pendulum is here regaining over and over again its 
position of advantage without further external assist- 
ance, it must under this conception —be the origi- 
nally applied external kinetic energy that is being over 
and over again reconverted into the potential energy 
of position. But, if so, then the kinetic energy devel- 
oped at the same time by the influence of gravity 
would be quite superfluous. If, on the contrary, it is 
the influence of gravity which during the fall develops 
the kinetic energy which lifts the pendulum to its posi- 
tion of advantage, what has become of the externally 
applied energy"' And what becomes in general of the 
externally applied energy that places any mass in a 
position of advantage that bends a spring, that ex- 
pands the volume of a mass, that establishes modes 

of tension or stress in the magnetic field? 

The impossibility of any ami runt of energy disapi n 



282 Biological Solutions 

ing without producing an equivalent effect affords the 
principal inducement for accepting the theory of the 
conservation of energy. But it is a mistake to believe 
that the work wrought by energy embodies the same 
amount of identical energy by which it has been 
wrought. Energy is wholly spent in establishing posi- 
tions of advantage. And the energy which a mass 
may then develop from this position of advantage owes 
its production entirely to the state of tension or stress 
established, either in relation to other masses, as is the 
case with gravitation and electricity; or in relation to 
an intrinsic property of the mass itself, as is the case 
with elasticity and cohesion. The power inherent in 
equilibrated masses, enabling them within certain lim- 
its ever so often to resist disequilibration ; this intrinsic 
power possessed by masses is inalienable, inexhaustible, 
and inconvertible. It can nowise be accounted for by 
energetics. 

The state of things here pointed out positively con- 
tradicts the principle of the conservation of energy. 
Yet it is, nevertheless, certain that no perpetuum mobile 
can be constructed, and that there obtains equivalence 
among all links in a chain of work-performed changes. 
The reason, however, why a perpetuum mobile cannot 
be constructed is, not because energy has been con- 
served, but because in doing work it is, on the contrary, 
spent and used up. And the reason why the work 
performed is equivalent to the work-performing energy 
is, not because the latter has been converted into the 
former, but because it cannot spend itself or be used 
up without performing and leaving behind an equiva- 
lent amount of work. If the work performed consists 
in establishing a position of advantage through disequi- 
libration of an existing state of equilibrium among or 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 283 

within masses, then kinetic energy may be developed 
therefrom, and new work performed in the process of 
reequilibration. If, on the contrary, the work per- 
formed consists in regaining a state of equilibrium, 
then, the equilibrium once gained, the equilibrated 
masses can develop no new energy, and can perform 
no new work without redisequilibration being estab- 
lished by a new application of external energy. 

In corroboration of the view here advocated, take 
the energy developed by an unbending spring. It is 
evidently developed from a position of advantage. The 
spring had to be forcibly bent by application of external 
energy overcoming the resistance to deformation on the 
part of the elastic mass, whereby the position of advan- 
tage was gained, from which energy could be developed 
and work performed. The energy developed and the 
work performed is here clearly due to the elastic force 
of the spring, a specific property of this peculiar mass. 
By means of it, it forcibly recovers from its state of 
reformation, regaining thereby its original state of 
equilibrium. Nowise is the externally applied energy 
here at work. It was wholly spent in bending the 
spring, and is certainly not operative in the following 
rebound of the elastic mass, which is entirely due to its 
own intrinsic endowment. In order to replace the 
elastic mass in a position of advantage, without which 
it is impotent to perform new work, a new application 
of external energy is each time required, and each time 
wholly spent in its effort of overcoming the elastic 
resistance of the spring, While, on the contrary, the 
elastic mass of the spring performs with undiminished 
power, each time it is bent, the work of opposing or 
resisting its deformation and of operating the energetic 
rebound; and all tin's from out its own inexhaustible 



284 Biological Solutions 

intrinsic endowment of what is called elasticity. With- 
out recourse to this inexhaustible power the kinetic 
theory of gases can make no sense out of given phe- 
nomena. And to have recourse to it contradicts out- 
right the theory of atomic mechanics, and also that of 
energetics. 

It was the seeming conversion of mechanical energy 
into heat, and the reconversion of this heat into an 
equivalent amount of mechanical energy, that has 
played the most prominent part in establishing the 
doctrine of the conservation of energy. It will, there- 
fore, conduce to a clearer understanding of what 
"energy" signifies to expose the fallacy involved in 
the current interpretation of the given facts. It has 
become almost self-evident that, if mechanical work 
applied to a mass raises its temperature to a certain 
degree, this definite amount of change wrought in the 
constitution of the mass, and generally believed to 
consist in a mode of motion of its constituent elements 
felt by us as heat — that this heat-motion will not dis- 
appear without producing equivalent changes. The 
way the theory of the conservation of energy interprets 
the experimentally ascertained equivalence of mechan- 
ical energy and heat is by assuming their essential iden- 
tity. It maintains that the mechanical energy applied 
to the mass is itself converted into the heat-energy, 
and that this same heat-energy could under most 
favorable conditions be reconverted into equivalent 
mechanical energy. And this, if it were true, would 
prove that energy is an indestructible entity, whose 
modes are interconvertible ; that, in fact, it is identi- 
cally conserved, despite all the work it may perform. 

That this interpretation is radically erroneous can 
readily be shown. Mechanical energy, such as friction, 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 285 

applied by one mass to another mass, does not really 
detach itself from the rubbing mass to slip over into 
the rubbed mass, becoming itself converted into heat. 
The mechanical energy is, on the contrary, wholly spent 
in developing heat-energy in the mass to which it is 
applied. This heat-energy is altogether an outcome of 
intrinsic reaction on the part of the mass to which the 
mechanical energy has been applied. The developed 
heat-energy is in its turn spent in expanding the mass 
in which it is incited, or in changing its state of so-called 
aggregation. On recontraction of the mass to its 
former equilibrated dimensions heat-energy becomes 
newly developed and wholly dissipated among adjoin- 
ing masses; or rather the heat-motion becomes gradu- 
ally arrested through its action upon adjoining masses. 
It can nowise as this identical heat be reconverted into 
mechanical work in the sense implied in the principle 
of the conservation of energy. Instead of conserva- 
tion of energy there is here consumption of energy, and 
development of entirely new energy, by which no 
mechanical external work is or can be performed, so 
long as the recontraction of the mass is equivalently 
in operation. To a correct understanding of physical 
processes it is essential to recognize that no work can be 
performed without the energy performing it being spent 
or used up thereby. In the case under discussion it 
lias been spent in every stage of the occurrence; first 
in the work of expansion or disaggregation, and then 
in the work of recontraction, leaving no energy avail- 
able to In- reconverted into external mechanical work; 
such as that applied in initiating the process. This 
initiating external energy was used up in overcoming 

the resistance of cohesion, and it was the intrinsic 
power of cohesion, which, when no longer counter 



286 Biological Solutions 

acted, furnishes the energy developed during recon- 
traction of the forcibly expanded mass. Forcible 
disequilibration among and within masses, and forcible 
reequilibration on release of the disequilibrating ten- 
sion or stress, is that which furnishes the moving power 
in physical processes. Disequilibration is imposed 
upon masses from without, reequilibration takes place 
from within their own sphere of intrinsic endowment. 
The validity of this mode of interpretation, so com- 
pletely at variance with the principle of the conserva- 
tion of energy, shall presently be rendered still more 
clearly evident. 

The "molecular" heat-commotion, sensible as such, 
and also measurable in its effects on other masses, is 
conceived as kinetic energy capable of doing work. 
The work it immediately performs consists in counter- 
acting the power of cohesion which binds the constitu- 
ent elements of a mass forcibly together. The visible 
outcome of this work carried on within the mass is its 
expansion or disaggregation. In measure as the con- 
jectured molecular motion slackens, or — what is the 
same thing — in measure as the mass cools down to 
its initial temperature, its intrinsic property of cohesion 
gains the ascendency, and the mass forcibly contracts 
to its original volume. In case no more energy were 
applied to a mass as is exactly required to expand or 
to disaggregate it, and in case it were furthermore pos- 
sible to confine the heat commotion thereby aroused 
altogether within the expanding or disaggregating 
mass, then the sensible result of the process would be 
simply expansion unaccompanied by what becomes 
sensible as heat. As proved by Sadi Carnot, and as 
deducible from ascertained premises, when mechanical 
work is performed by the kinetic energy of heat, heat 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 287 

itself, which without performing such work, would be 
externally sensible, wholly disappears as such. It is, 
in fact, used up as energy in the work it performs. It 
is not latently retained in the expanded or disaggregated 
mass as Black once thought. Heat, conceived as a 
mode of motion, is here simply arrested by counter- 
acting resistance, and exists no more. A forcibly ex- 
panded or disaggregated mass is itself in a state of 
intrinsic disequilibration. But it is also disequilibrated 
in relation to surrounding masses. It can maintain 
its disequilibrated state only by means of a continued 
application of external energy, because in order to 
maintain at the same time its state of disequilibration 
in relation to surrounding masses, a great part of the 
energy externally aroused in it is thereby consumed. 
The result of this action upon surrounding masses 
becomes sensible as heat or pressure. The mass can 
regain its former equilibrated state of cohesive con- 
traction only in being allowed to cool down by discon- 
tinuing the external application of energy, in which 
case its reequilibration in relation to surrounding 
masses evinces itself in so-called dissipation of heat or 
cessation of pressure. 

And here, in mentioning the still current expression, 
"dissipation of heat," it may be opportune to remem- 
ber that heat, being a mode of activity, and not an 
entity or substance as formerly believed, can no more 
detach itself from the mass which manifests it, and of 
which it is the activity, than any other mode of activity. 
Activities are inseparable from that of which they are 
the activity, and they are all visually revealed to the 
investigator as modes of motion inseparably attaching 

lo the masses which are their actual bearers. The 

heat-commotion arising within a contracting mass be- 



288 Biological Solutions 

comes gradually arrested and eventually stopped by 
its action upon surrounding masses. Imagine, now, 
that the entire process of expansion, and that of recon- 
traction, were taking equivalently place exclusively 
within the mass itself without waste through external 
action. In this case, as already stated, the expansion 
or disaggregation would occur without becoming exter- 
nally manifest as sensible heat, the entire heat-energy 
being consumed in the intrinsic work performed. It 
is certainly not latently conserved in the expanded 
mass. But in the process of recon traction by force of 
cohesion new heat-commotion will necessarily be pro- 
duced, for, without such retrograde, readjusting process, 
no return to the original state of cohesive equilibrium 
could be effected. The mass would remain for- 
ever expanded. This new heat-commotion, necessarily 
accompanying recon traction, amounts to an entirely 
new-production of kinetic energy, comparable to that 
developed in the fall of bodies. Necessarily this in- 
trinsic activity constituting the kinetic energy of heat, 
and conceived as motion, has to become arrested in 
order to allow the recontraction of the mass to take 
place. This retrograde process is externally felt as the 
cooling-down of the contracting mass, which really 
means that the heat-commotion is as energy consumed 
in working heat-effects in surrounding masses. As 
soon as the cohesive equilibrium of the mass is restored, 
all forcible activity, all heat-commotion, all manifesta- 
tion of energy ceases in the mass itself, and in relation 
to its surroundings. And nowhere is the energy which 
was operative in the process latently or potentially 
conserved. 

There obtains in the case examined, as in all other 
physical occurrences, complete equivalence in all stages 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 289 

of the process, but no reconversion of an identical 
amount of heat into the identical mechanical energy 
which gave rise to it. All that the externally applied 
energy could accomplish was to place the "molecules" 
of the mass in a position of advantage or stress against 
the counteracting force of cohesion, allowing thereupon, 
on release of the stress, kinetic energy to be developed 
by the same inexhaustible cohesive force. If during 
the process of contraction the level of heat-commotion 
persisted at any moment undiminished in the expanded 
mass, instead of becoming arrested by its action upon 
surrounding masses, no further contraction could take 
place. The contracting energy of cohesion would then 
be equivalently counteracted, and the mass would re- 
main in a new state of equilibrium. Such a new state 
of equilibrium would actually be gained in case the 
temperature of the surrounding masses were raised to 
the level of that of the mass in process of contraction. 
Hence the necessity of a lower level of temperature in 
surrounding masses in order that the heat-commotion 
of the mass to which external energy is applied may be 
enabled to perform work. This state of things, pointed 
out by Carnot, follows simply from the general fact 
here elucidated, the fact that equilibrated masses can 
develop no energy ; energy being only developed in the 
course of equilibrating activity. 

It is important to accentuate in this connection, that 
the heat, incited by mechanical energy applied to a 
mass, can nowise be reconverted into mechanical 
energy, as assumed by the theory of the conservation 
of energy, Mayer's reasoning, and Joule's experi- 
ments, hold good only as regards the equivalent devel- 
opment of heat-commotion by means of mechanical 
v. The reconversion of this same identical heat 



290 Biological Solutions 

into, for instance, the mechanical lifting of an external 
mass to a certain height — this reconversion is for 
various reasons a downright impossibility. When exter- 
nal work is actually performed by an expanding mass 
which lifts another mass to a certain height, the resist- 
ance to displacement on the part of the other mass has 
to be overcome by the development of an amount of 
heat-energy within the expanding mass additional to 
that which would have expanded it when not perform- 
ing external work. Without this additional heat- 
energy it could perform no external work. 

The performance of work against equilibrated 
masses necessarily involves the consumption of the 
energy performing it. When equilibration is attained, 
the activity which brings it about consequently ceases. 
And when this activity is physically conceived as energy 
or as motion, then as soon as the task of equilibration 
has been accomplished, the energy has therewith been 
consumed, and the motion has come to a standstill. 
No conservation of energy, and no interconversion of 
its modes, takes place anywhere in nature. 

The underlying problem here involved concerns the 
true nature of that which constitutes the forcible ten- 
sion or stress as naturally or artificially established 
between or within disequilibrated masses; which ten- 
sion or stress allows on release the forcible work of 
equilibration to take its course. The perceptible visual 
sign of this energetic activity is for our conscious appre- 
hension simply a mode of motion. To the inferred 
impelling cause of the activity the name of " force" is 
physically given, and the power of the activity to per- 
form work is called " energy." A further essential con- 
dition underlying physical activity is the intrinsic 
nature of the masses displaying such specific properties, 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 291 

as gravity, cohesion, elasticity, electricity, and chemical 
affinity. 

Besides the epistemological considerations just 
pointed out, three principal facts fatal to the theory 
of the conservation of energy were disclosed during 
the course of this discussion ; which same facts are like- 
wise fatal to atomic mechanics, and fatal, indeed, to 
the entire scheme of mechanical interpretation, when 
assumed to be a true and adequate explanation of phys- 
ical occurrences. These facts are: first, the insepara- 
bility of an activity from that of which it is the activity ; 
second, advantage of position due to forcible disequil- 
ibration; and third, the intrinsic inexhaustible power 
possessed by masses to resist and counteract over and 
over again with undiminished efficiency, within certain 
limits, any external disturbance of their equilibrated 
state. The position of advantage of a mass in relation 
to other masses, or in relation to their own constituent 
elements, cannot be what is physically understood as 
"potential energy," even if the implied and declared 
inertness of masses, and, therefore, their incapacity of 
harboring latent energy when at rest, is left out of 
account. The advantage of position of a mass does 
not consist in its embodiment of latent energy. It is 
merely a starting point; wherefrom, on release of the 
tension which constitutes the advantage of position, 
kinetic energy may be developed in masses through 
activities set going within and between them. Forci- 
ble and constant resistance to disequilibration on the 
part of masses; their resistance to being forced into a 
state of separation, distortion, disaggregation, or dis- 
sociation, is that which gives rise to tension, and which 
on return to equilibration develops the motion embody- 
ing kinetic energy. The tension is directly felt in the 



ig 2 Biological Solutions 

resistance experienced and steadily maintained in lift- 
ing a mass, in bending a spring, in pulling an elastic 
cord, in separating the armature from a magnet. In 
fact, advantage of position, or forcible tension or stress 
naturally afforded or artificially established, is the 
mainspring of all activity in perceptible nature. If all 
tensions or stresses constituting positions of advantage 
were released, and in consequence equilibration among 
masses fully established, there would inevitably result 
utter stagnation, complete inactivity. 

No such result can possibly occur on our globe, for 
it subsists with all its manifoldly and specifically con- 
stituted parts in interdependence with the entire cos- 
mos, and quite especially in close interdependence with 
the turbulent masses that compose the sun, and also 
most directly in interdependence with the intervening 
medium called " ether." The principal power which 
is unremittingly counteracting equilibration in terres- 
trial masses, establishing renewed and .new stresses in 
and among them ; placing them thereby in positions of 
advantage from which renewed and new changes may 
be wrought ; this mighty power is that known as ' ' ra- 
diant energy." Radiant energy is incomparably the 
most effective change-producing influence reaching our 
globe, and manifest here in a multitude of various 
effects, grouped under the names of light, heat, elec- 
tricity, chemical action, and pressure. It is generally 
believed that radiant energy is emitted from the sun 
and other stars, and is conveyed to the earth by an 
intervening medium, itself specifically indifferent, and 
merely transmitting it. But as no activity can possi- 
bly detach itself from the mass or entity of which it is 
the activity, it is clear that radiant energy cannot con- 
sist of an activity emitted from the sun as something 



Physical Substantiality and Causation -93 

detaching itself from it, making its way as such through 
an indifferent medium, and reaching the earth as the 
same identical something. The theory of detached 
motion, energy or electricity traveling along as sepa- 
rate entities is rationally untenable. Radiant energy, 
as something revealed in its various sensible effects, can 
be only a specific activity incited in whatever consti- 
tutes the interstellar medium ; an activity whose physi- 
cal modes of actuation are altogether an outcome of 
the medium's own specific endowment. This medium 
under the name of "ether" is being more and more 
fully recognized as constituting an inexhaustible maga- 
zine of supremely potent energy, whose interaction 
with ponderable masses — themselves seemingly pro- 
ducts eliminated from it — gives rise to the perceptible 
phenomena of nature which become consciously re- 
vealed to us, and which as such form the objects of 
physical research. 

The demonstration of stresses and modes of inter- 
action between what are consciously realized as pond- 
erable masses and the inferred imponderable bearer 
of radiant energy ; a scientifically ascertained fact which 
essentially agrees with the view here advocated, and 
entertained by the present writer for more than a score 
of years; this positive fact has recently led physicists 
to formulate a theory of the constitution of perceptible 
masses and their changes wholly at variance with that 
of inert material particles mechanically energized by 
modes of motion. 

A much more consistent and profound theory of 
cosmic evolution, or rather of cosmic elaboration and 
development, may be constructed from the data here 
brought to light, than that which lias been derived 
from atomic mechanics, or from energetics. The quali- 



294 Biological Solutions 

tative or specific elaboration of power-endowed masses 
is of far greater import to nature and to life, than would 
be a mere mechanical grouping of inert atoms, or the 
mere transformation into different guises of one and 
the same identically abiding factotum. 

In this connection it is instructive to recognize that 
human inventions and contrivances, making up as they 
do the medium in which social progress is rendered pos- 
sible, are realized by artificially placing suitable masses 
in new positions of advantage towards one another, 
whereby new and humanly serviceable effects are made 
to arise. 

Radiant energy, manifest in its various effects among 
masses, has especially through its heat effects power 
to convert solids into liquids, and liquids into gases, 
and it has especially through its electrical effects power 
to dissociate chemical combinations, fracturing, more- 
over, the so-called chemical elements into immensely 
smaller units. The inference lies near that radiant 
energy, if still more intensely and advantageously at 
work, would, have power to efface still more radically 
differences obtaining between elements of masses. This 
inference seems corroborated by the simple spectrum 
of glowing nebulae. And it has lately become more 
than probable that the "atoms," or rather the chemi- 
cal units of radium, become gradually more and more 
broken up so as partly and finally to be converted into 
the very primitive element "helium." Such facts have 
again suggested the theory, put forward long ago on 
other grounds, namely, that all chemical compounds 
result from multiple combinations of one single kind 
of primordial element. But difference of constitution 
is an essential characteristic manifestly underlying the 
chemical bond of union between masses, giving rise by 



Physical Substantiality and Causation 295 

force of what is called "affinitive attraction" to new 
and different kinds of " substances." 

A very few kinds of so-called elements are found to 
combine in multifold, ways, so as to form a vast num- 
ber of strikingly different products, as witnessed in 
hydrocarbons and other organic substances. The for- 
mation of a multiplicity of specific compounds by only 
a few so-called elements has been generally attributed 
to definite different modes of their accouplement and 
spatial arrangement. More recently each "atom" of 
so-called elements is considered to be composed of an 
entire system of far more primitive units, distinguished 
from one another by carrying w r ith them different num- 
bers of the units of which electrical charges consist, 
or possibly consisting themselves altogether of such 
electrical charges. Under this view a justified interpre- 
tation of the multiplicity of specific chemical com- 
pounds, formed by only a few of the so-called chemical 
elements, would be that each different "chemical com- 
bination" of one or the other part of their dissociated 
primitive units would form new specific compounds 
with new modes of affinitive attraction to the rest of 
the units, and would after such specific chemical union 
display new modes of action and reaction. The under- 
lying contrast of characteristics giving rise to affinitive 
attraction becomes here among the primitive units mani- 
fest as what are called negative and positive electrons, 
the latter being probably not separate entities but 
belonging to the stable matrix from which the former 
are disequilibrated constituents. From these consid- 
erations it would seem to follow, that radiant energy, 
if brought to bear in full concentrated force upon pond- 
erable masses, would act as a solvent capable of absorb- 
ing them all into the common medium. 



296 Biological Solutions 

The reverse of this process of dissolution of ponder- 
able masses, and their incorporation into the common 
medium, would then be a kind of differentiation, precip- 
itation, or crystallization of most primitive elements, 
assuming thereby the characteristics of mass, and 
establishing by force of their segregation disequilibra- 
tion-stresses within their emitting medium. Modes of 
interaction among themselves, and in relation to their 
cosmic matrix, would then give rise to the elabora- 
tion of the perceptible phenomena of nature, and their 
physical manifestations. 

These seem to be legitimate inferences from what has 
been called the new theory of matter. But it must not 
be lost sight of, that such ponderable stuff, and its mani- 
fest specified appearances, are revealed to conscious- 
ness merely in terms of our visual and other sensible 
awareness. We are, in fact, directly aware of nothing 
but the effects of activities that take place in the realm 
of extra-conscious subsistence and creative operations. 
The physical effects are perceived as measurable masses 
and their interdependent motions. In ultimate analy- 
sis what is thus perceived in direct awareness dissolves 
into purely perceptual phenomena, whose definite be- 
havior in time and space-perception allows us symboli- 
cally to conjecture what is really occurring in the realm 
of extra-conscious, power-endowed existence. 1 

1 See "Monera and the Problem of Life" "Popular Science 
Monthly," 1878; "The Dual Aspect of our Nature" Boston 
" Index," 1885 ; " Is Pantheism the Legitimate Outcome of 
Science?" "Journal of Speculative Philosophy," read before the 
Concord School of Philosophy, 1885; " To be Alive, What is it? " 
" Monist," 1895. 



V. HOW MECHANICAL NECESSITY BECOMES 
OVERRULED IN NATURE 

In the introductory section it was admitted that 
"so long as the necessitarian contention of natural 
science cannot in its own field be proved to have been 
due to a mistaken interpretation, it will stand an im- 
pregnable bulwark against all attempts at scientifically 
or philosophically justifying free human self-determi- 
nation." 

In fact, the conception of necessary causation applied 
to the phenomena of physical science is likewise ap- 
plied to those of psychical science. Rigorous determi- 
nation of consequents by antecedents in the psychical 
sphere, of effects by causes in the physical sphere, seems 
to leave no room for any breach in the necessitarian, 
and therewith fatalistic, concatenation of all natural 
phenomena. Everything that happens in nature is 
said to have a definite efficient cause, and is, therefore, 
necessitated. Nothing whatever can then happen 
without being thus necessarily caused. This, indeed, 
is the all but universally accepted view. 

As to the strictly mechanical interpretation of physi- 
cal phenomena, inert atoms coerced with absolute 
necessity into changing spatial arrangements by force 
of imparted and transferable motion, is all it has to 
nfier wherewith to construct nature. It seeks to ac- 
count for all perceptible occurrences at least, by ascrib- 
ing them to mere changes in the distribution of an 
unchangeably given number of material atoms, or of 



298 Biological Solutions 

some kind of unchangeably given ultimate units as- 
sumed to compose bodies or masses, actuated by a 
definite unchangeable amount of motion unequally 
apportioned among them, and manifest as the direc- 
tion, velocity, and mechanical effects of the moving 
masses. It follows that the sum total of all atoms 
or units composing masses, and the total amount of 
motion actuating the changes, remain both absolutely 
equal in each succeeding moment of time. This state 
of things involves consistently, that that which occurs 
in the present moment is essentially equal to what im- 
mediately preceded it; and that the entire succeeding 
series of changes in the future will be at each link of 
the causative chain always equal to its immediately 
preceding cause; " causa cequat effectum" If motion is, 
as here assumed, the sole actuating agent in nature, 
then that which is moved, of whatever it may really 
consist, must necessarily be itself inert, passive, and 
devoid of qualitative distinctions. All manifest dis- 
tinctions, then, are necessarily held to be mechanically 
due to different modes and amounts of motion, giving 
rise to definite spatial groupings of the implicated inert 
units. 

Modes of motion are distinguished from one another 
by the different directions and different velocities 
imparted to masses and to their constituent elements. 
This being so, how from these meager factors and con- 
ditions the astonishingly varied and specific qualities 
of definite bodies or masses can possibly result is wholly 
unthinkable. Rationally unthinkable also, as shown 
in the preceding section, is motion itself as a separate 
entity detachable from moving masses, and as being 
the real agent that moves or actuates them. Motion 
detached from mass, and conceived as being a self- 



Mechanical Necessity Overruled 299 

existing and force-endowed entity, is clearly a mere 
conceptual fiction, to which nothing actually experi- 
enced is found to correspond. Surely such a thing as 
motion detached from mass is an airy nothing without 
a local habitation. And how, indeed, can a moving 
mass be really moved by the motion it carries along 
with it? 

It was, on the contrary, found that masses, far from 
being passive and inert, are themselves specific agents 
endowed with inexhaustible efficiencies, by force of 
which they move in definite ways whenever disequil- 
ibration of their statical relations to one another, or 
disequilibration of their own intrinsic static constitu- 
tion, takes place. A mass moves towards the earth 
when it has been forcibly separated from it, and is 
thereupon regaining its statical equilibrium. A spring 
unbends, and moves in consequence, when it has been 
distorted out of its equilibrated state. A mass moves 
by being forcibly struck or impelled out of its equil- 
ibrated position, and comes to rest when it has reached 
a new equilibrated position. It is not the grouping of 
inert particles by force of motion, nor the entrance into 
masses of an indestructible something called "energy;" 
it is the masses themselves that manifest as endowment 
of their own the sense-revealed activities and the quali- 
tative properties consciously recognized as such. 

It is an undeniable fact that masses of different 
chemical constitution, or the same mass in different 
states of consistency, possess different perceptible qual- 
ities, and display specific modes of action and reaction. 
Hydrochloric acid, for instance, possesses strikingly 
different qualitative properties from those of separately 
existing hydrogen and chlorene of which it is composed ; 
or from any other chemical element or compound. 



300 Biological Solutions 

These specific qualitative differences can nowise be 
accounted for by the mechanical theory. They cannot 
be simply due to different modes of motion imparted 
to the inert elements of masses, or to any mode of their 
spatial arrangement. Nor can they be due to quali- 
tative modes of appearance of the assumed factotum 
"energy." The modes of action and of reaction of 
definite masses are specific and manifold, and are due 
to inherent properties of their own. 

The specific properties inherent in bodies or masses, 
evidenced by their peculiar qualitative appearance, and 
by their peculiar modes of action and reaction, are 
obviously that which is most essential in nature, far 
more so than mere mechanical causation would be, 
despite its preeminent importance to physical science. 
It introduces with each new formation of chemical 
compounds, and with each new disturbance of equili- 
brated states, essential modifications, and developmental 
changes and potencies in the enchainment of causes 
and effects, rendering possible progressive evolution, 
which could not take place through mere mechanical 
means, whereby everything would be rigorously pre- 
determined in a purely mechanical world. The specific 
modes of constitution and specific modes of action and 
reaction of masses brought newly into existence by 
means of chemical composition, or by changes of equil- 
ibration, are the essential prerequisites to progressive 
development. 

Newly arising, specifically different, modes of being 
prove, in fact, to be of decisive importance in the course 
of cosmic evolution, or rather in the course of the quali- 
tative elaboration of perceptible nature. We have 
here a kind of epigenesis similar to that occurring in 
the development of organisms from their germs. Pre- 



Mechanical Necessity Overruled joi 

vious formations serve as foundation for succeeding 
developmental stages. These new formations become 
causative agents operative in the arising of a multipli- 
city of natural phenomena not previously manifest nor 
previously mechanically necessitated. Such new for- 
mations, endowed with new properties, are evidently 
not the mere mechanically equivalent effects of inert 
particles knocked into peculiar spatial arrangements by 
modes of motion. And even if their formation could 
possibly be accounted for by the mechanical theory, 
they would by force of their specific modes of action 
and reaction enrich the purely mechanical world of 
measurable quantities with an interpolation of mechan- 
ically unaccountable qualitative phenomena, nowise 
necessitated as outcomes of mechanical causation. 
That, for example, the combination of hydrogen and 
oxygen should result in the formation of a liquid which 
displays properties entirely different from its compos- 
ing elements, manifest in manifold modes of specific 
action and reaction ; a liquid which forms our seas, 
lakes, rivers, clouds, and rains, and which is an indis- 
pensable, paramount formative component of living 
organisms; all this and everything of the same kind 
that has imparted to the originally homogeneous world- 
stuff specific differentiations, which have entered into 
the construction of the terrestrial globe, and into the 
multiplicity of its definite formations, each endowed 
with newly acquired properties; all this accruing diver- 
sity of forms and potencies is certainly of hyper-me- 
chanical origin, and breaks most effectively through a 

concatenation <>\ occurrences where effects are deemed 

to be strictly equivalent to their causes. 

To be sure, when once formed, the modes Of action 

and reaction of the new formations strictly conform to 



3° 2 Biological Solutions 

definite ways predetermined in their own constitution, 
and in their definite relations to the environment. 
Such specific modes of constitution and of activity, 
newly introduced into the perceptible world, display 
a multiplicity of different phenomena, in response to 
different occasional incitements from without, and are 
consequently mechanically incalculable and unpredict- 
able. Who could have mechanically foretold and cal- 
culated that such a harmless substance as glycerin 
combined with so chemically torpid a substance as 
nitrogen, would be capable on dissociation to be causing 
such tremendous mechanical effects. The nexus of 
cause and effect, declared to be rigorously necessitated, 
would hardly have come to produce, artificially unaided, 
this dread substance, consisting of components derived 
and brought together in eminently artificial ways by 
human effort. And it is obvious that our progressive 
civilization and culture are mainly the outcome of 
inventive interference with what is scientifically held 
to be the necessitated course of mechanical causation. 
But nature, artificially unaided, has at every step of 
her developmental changes introduced new formations 
into the causative nexus, which have essentially modified 
pure mechanical necessity in qualitatively incalcu- 
lable ways. Of these necessity-modifying, hyper- 
mechanical formations our own organic being affords, 
the most conspicuous and prominent example, having 
in the course of its vital development become a per- 
former of volitionally aimful actions in relation to a 
highly complex environment, and a bearer and inter- 
preter of the entire phenomenal world, arising in its 
all-revealing consciousness as reactive response to the 
multifold inciting calls of the great outside world. 
With the recognition of this last-mentioned incon- 



Mechanical Necessity Overruled 303 

testable truth; the truth, namely, that the world as 
actually perceived by us is a phenomenon arising in 
each of us as individual awareness; with this most 
enlightening recognition, the question of mechanical 
necessity and qualitative development discloses itself 
as far more profoundly complicated than has as yet 
been indicated in this section, and as generally recog- 
nized by scientists. The world we perceive and 
apprehend, with all its qualitative and quantitative 
appearances, becomes therewith ideally transfigured ; 
being found to exist as conscious phenomenon inside, 
and not as a foreign something outside our own being. 
With regard to qualitative distinctions as actually 
perceived, it has become philosophically certain, and 
generally acknowledged, that they are altogether of 
subjective sensorial origin. Qualities seemingly attach- 
ing to outside existents, such as colors, sounds, smells, 
tastes, of all varieties, and also all that is tactually felt, 
are one and all mere modes of transient conscious 
awareness. Unless, then, these sensations, which 
make up the things and qualities we are directly con- 
scious of, correspond as revealing signs to extra-con- 
scious existents and their specific characteristics, they 
can have no cognitive validity reaching beyond them- 
selves, and would be in this case incapable of yielding 
the rational information upon which we rely in our eon- 
duct of life. The mechanically necessitated world, if 
illy existed, would, despoiled of qualitative distinc- 
tions, and regardless of conscious awareness, run its 
purely quantitative course among nothing but inde- 
structible inert atoms actuated and grouped into 
bodily formations by the indestructible agent called 
"motion." 
This interpretation, that has seemed so satisfactory 



304 Biological Solutions 

to physical science, and which is still advocated by 
most scientists, is as an explanation of the real state of 
things wholly upset by recognizing, that just as certain 
as perceived qualities are modes of subjective sensorial 
awareness, just as certain are also all modes of per- 
ceived motion, and all kinds of perceived masses, mere 
modes of subjective sensorial awareness. Perceived 
motion, the only motion we have actual knowledge 
of, forms indubitably likewise part of the percipient's 
conscious content. Motion can, therefore, nowise 
be an all-efficient agent such as mechanical science 
makes use of as its factotum. It is, in verity, a mere 
forceless, transient perceptual sign of extra-conscious 
activities. This philosophical truth is conclusively 
established, and has in future to be reckoned with by 
physical science. In fact, a number of scientists are 
already making their solemn bow to the ever-intrud- 
ing specter of ' ' Erkenntnisstheorie ' ' looming in the 
background. In this treatise it has at length been 
shown, that we are fully justified in inferring that modes 
of motion are conscious signs signalizing definite modes 
of activity at work in the realm of extra-conscious 
existence. 

The immediate objects of physical research, as actu- 
ally present in consciousness, are as such perceptual 
signs of definite modes of activity inferred as occurring 
in and among extra-conscious existents. These con- 
scious signs of extra-conscious activities, consisting of 
perceived or conceived modes of motion, are them- 
selves forming part of definite percepts occupying 
visual space. It is with the visibly revealed charac- 
teristics of extra-conscious existents that physical 
science mainly occupies itself. And here it is impor- 
tant to mention again, that the visible phenomena are 



Mechanical Necessity Overruled 3°S 

not themselves in any sense causative agents. For 
instance, what are called vibrations or waves of air or 
ether are only visibly experienced forceless signs of the 
existence and activity of real agencies that affect in 
specific ways our visual or auditory sensibilities. What 
are here recognized, for example, as definite wave- 
motions of air, and found to correspond to definite 
auditory percepts or sounds, are in truth exclusively 
visual phenomena, — phenomena expressed in terms of 
visual perception. Such visual perception cannot pos- 
sibly, as generally maintained, be itself the real agency 
that affects our auditory sensibility. A visual phe- 
nomenon, itself an utterly forceless mode of conscious 
awareness, cannot give rise to an auditory phenomenon, 
an entirely different, but likewise forceless mode of 
awareness. The auditory phenomenon, the sound, is 
evidently aroused by the same extra-conscious agency 
that simultaneously also arouses the visual phenomenon 
appearing as wave-motion. 

All effects of radiant energy or activity are physically 
expressed in terms of visual awareness perceived or 
conceived as definite modes of motion. Its othenvise 
manifold causative efficiencies are, however, recognized, 
not only as being directly and exclusively effects 
wrought in our visual sensibility as mere modes of 
motion; they are, moreover, recognized as manifold 
disparate qualitative effects: luminous, chromatic, 
thermal, chemical, electric, magnetic, and even as 
causing inertia, which seems to have been recently 
rtained. 

Physical science strives to reduce all perceptible 

phenomena to purely mechanical laws by seeking to 

express them in terms of visual perception, whose 

occupancy and modes of motion can 



3°6 Biological Solutions 

be rendered accurately measurable, and subject to 
mathematical treatment. Physical science transmutes 
thereby the abundant wealth and multifold potencies of 
perceptible nature into a visual Phenomenism made up 
of nothing but moving phantoms. But, it may be 
asked, how can mere transient visual phenomena be 
at all measured, and how can any manner of scales 
be applied to them ? The condition indispensably under- 
lying the possibility of physical measurement is found, 
not in the surface play of fleeting phenomena, but 
deep down in extra-conscious nature where all creative 
or formative work is wrought and permanently sus- 
tained. 

This conditio sine qua non underlying the meas- 
urement of transitory visual phenomena is found 
— as explained in a former section — in the genuine 
substantiality of the living matrix whence the visible 
appearances issue into actual awareness, and are there 
identically sustained by continuous reproduction. Un- 
less thus identically sustained within actual awareness 
by means of constant reinstatement, no measurement 
of natural phenomena would be possible, no exact physi- 
cal science attainable ; indeed, no kind of rational con- 
ception of nature and life formed. 

Surely, it is certain that no manner of scales can be 
directly applied to visual phenomena, to mere conscious 
appearances. If these were self-sufficient ideal exist- 
ents signalizing nothing beyond themselves, no kind of 
measuring apparatus could be applied to them. Ideal 
phenomena can evidently nowise be manipulated, and 
there is here actually in sight nothing but visual phe- 
nomena within subjective awareness. What, it must 
then be asked, is really weighed, to what are scales in 
verity applied, what is actually placed under the micro- 



Mechanical Necessity Overruled 307 

meter, or measured by any kind of appliance? The 
answer is plain. Scales, not merely as perceptually 
present in consciousness, but as real extra-conscious 
existents, are handled, not by what is consciously per- 
ceived as our organism, but by our real extra-conscious 
being, and are directly applied, not to our visual per- 
cepts, but to the extra-conscious existents signalized 
by them. Fancy a physicist weighing his own visual 
percepts, or a biologist placing them under the micro- 
scope ! 

While recognizing the vast importance of physical 
science, as a doctrine yielding positively reliable infor- 
mation regarding perceptible nature, it can, on the other 
hand, not be denied that it reduces the multifold specifi- 
cally, qualitatively, and efficiently distinct existents 
and potencies of the real world, to the single meager 
effects produced by them in the medium of mere visual 
sensibility, where it deals only with definite spatial 
percepts undergoing relative modes of motion. Thereby 
is dropped out of sight and consideration all that is 
most important, efficacious, and diversely specific in 
nature. 

Physical science as at present constituted can, 
therefore, not be accepted as an adequate interpre- 
tation of the perceptible world. Nor does its alleged 
unbroken necessity and equivalence of occurrences, as 
figured out in an endless chain of mere mechanical 
causation, hold good at any stage of the developmental 
process in real creative, extra-conscious nature, to 
which all perceptible things, we ourselves included, 

their gradual elaboration and present exist- 

Oualitative developmental elaboration of extra- 
conscious, interdependent, and interacting power- 



3°8 Biological Solutions 

endowed existents is the essential fact to be recognized 
in perceptible nature, not interpretable as the mere 
necessary and causatively equivalent concatenation of 
mechanically moved inert masses. 1 

1 See " The Dependence of Quality on Specific Energies " " Mind " 
Jan., 1880. " Is Quality the result of difference in the numerical 
addition and position of qualitatively equal units, and therefore 
a mere function of quantity? Or is Quantity itself some kind of 
primitive quality, the multiple discrimination of an indivisible quali- 
tative unit? This is precisely the problem." 

Also "Automatism and Spontaniety" " Monist " Oct. 1893. 
" Are we conscious Automata? " Proceedings of the Texas Acad- 
emy of Science, June, 1896. 



VI. THE LIVING SUBSTANCE AS SENSORI- 
MOTOR AGENT 

The extra -conscious, power-endowed existent, re- 
vealed as living substance in perceptual awareness, 
composes all vital organisms. Its structure, as evi- 
denced in the progressive development of higher and 
higher forms of life, has become in the course of phy- 
letic evolution elaborated to such an astonishing degree 
of complexity and efficiency, as renders these higher 
forms of life capable of performing all the wondrous 
vital functions displayed by them. This manifoldly 
and multifoldly individuated living substance may at 
all its stages of elaboration be rightly looked upon as a 
sensori-motor agent. It feels and it moves. It alone of 
all known perceptible objects is endowed, as functional 
outcome of its vital organization, with the faculty of 
self -movement, and with the property of self-feeling. 
The attribution to the living substance of the property 
of self-feeling is not an a priori ontological assump- 
tion. It expresses a fact of nature experientially 
revealed, and epistemologically justified, as shall be- 
come obvious further on. 

Of all known existents the living substance alone 
reacts on external stimulation in self-important ways, 
as a unitary whole. This specifically vital reaction is 
impanied by self-feeling or sentiency, whose pro-, 
gressive differentiation and development are an outcome 
of the underlying progressive organic elaboration of its 

vital bearer, wrought within h in relation to manifold 

influences of the medium, and through interaction with 



3io Biological Solutions 

the same. As result of this process of organic develop- 
ment, the entire surface of the organism, directly ex- 
posed, as it is, to the stimulating influences of the 
medium, has eventually become elaborated into sen- 
sory organs, which in response to the diverse modes of 
stimulation have become, especially in the cephalic 
or highest region, more and more specifically adapted 
to them. The specific modes of stimulation elicit as 
vital reaction or response correspondingly specific 
modes of sentiency: tactual, thermal, gustatory, olfac- 
tory, auditory, and visual, pleasurably or unpleasurably 
tinged; which specific modes of feeling serve as signs 
revealing the presence and characteristics of the stimu- 
lating agencies. They are all developmental modifi- 
cations of the original undifferentiated self -feeling. 
Obviously, the specific feelings or sensations of touch- 
ing, seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting are various 
modes of self-feeling phyletically differentiated and 
rendered specific in correspondence to, and depend- 
ence upon, the differentiation and elaboration of the 
surface organs of sense. 

It is to the living being, as a unitary sentient whole, 
that significant developmental specifications of its 
sentiency accrue in the process of organic elaboration ; 
primarily initiated through differentiation and elabo- 
ration into sensory organs of the surface structure, 
and developed in relation to the definite stimulating 
influences of the medium. These sensorial modes 
of self -feeling yield correspondingly specific modes of 
information regarding the special characteristics of the 
stimulating influences. At first, in lower stages of 
organic elaboration, differentiated sensory structures 
convey each its separate kind of information to the 
living being; tactual, or auditory, or visual, and so on. 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 311 

On further structural development organic combina- 
tions of the sundry sensory organs become, moreover, 
centrally established, yielding more complete and more 
complex sensorial and perceptual information regarding 
the external existents signalized thereby. Such com- 
binations of diverse modes of sensorial awareness are 
found, in fact, embodied in what may be called syn- 
thetic structures. It is the function of these structures, 
as extra-conscious existents, that becomes conscious as 
specifically complex yet unified modes of sensorial 
awareness, together with their definite accompanying 
motor outcomes ; all of which conscious manifestations 
are due to actions and reactions of the indiscerptible 
organic being. Of such synthetic structures the com- 
plex sense -combining and sense-centralizing organ of 
speech affords one of the most striking examples. It 
involves in organic intercommunication the sensorial 
faculties of hearing, seeing, and touching, besides other 
higher modes of sensori-motor activity consciously 
apprehended by the living being, as supreme modifica- 
tions and elaborations of his sensori-motor nature. 

This same originally undifferentiated and unspecified 
self-feeling, besides rendering organic needs consciously 
manifest, becomes also in the course of higher elabora- 
tion differentiated into manifold affective modes of sen- 
tiency, indicative of favorable or unfavorable effects of 
foreign influences on its own well-being. The percep- 
tual awareness of a foreign existent is no1 solely a cog- 
nitive incident, but is also of affective and conative 
import. It awakens immediate pleasurable or painful 

ingS and emotions, and incites to appropriate 
modes of motor reaction in organized connection with 

the same The direct original interdependence of the 
psychological trinity : affection, cognition, and conation, 



3!2 Biological Solutions 

is strikingly manifest in the behavior of animals, and 
there the more so where memorized experience does 
not consciously complicate and inhibit their immediate 
interaction. Of course, as regards these psychological 
phenomena experienced by foreign organisms, they can 
only be analogically inferred from perceptible signs, 
interpreted in accordance with the investigator's own 
psychical experience. This roundabout mode of infor- 
mation of what psychically occurs in other living beings 
is the only one available, and as such also the only 
information received regarding what is actually psychi- 
cally occurring even in beings nearest to us. Inferences 
regarding psychical faculties possessed by organisms 
lower in the scale of development than ourselves may 
be reached by the study of comparative nerve and brain 
anatomy and physiology. 

The motor outcomes of the functional activity of the 
living substance are outwardly perceptible signs of what 
the functioning organism is inwardly psychically ex- 
periencing. The extra-conscious activity of the extra- 
conscious being is felt directly by itself as a conscious 
or sentient state. By outsiders it is perceived as some 
kind of motion taking place in the perceptually revealed 
organism forming part of their own conscious content. 
We are epistemologically justified in concluding, that 
there is a definite activity at work in the existent per- 
ceptually revealed as the living organism, which causes 
through sensorial stimulation definite motor percep- 
tions to arise in the conscious content of onlookers. In 
consequence of it the living substance may rightly be 
called a motor agent, although the real nature of the 
activity here at work is only indirectly known through 
its motor effects. 

The vitality of the living substance is not a static 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 3 l 3 

property. It is the outcome of a dynamical process. 
It is not the property of any kind of mere chemical 
compound. It is altogether a phyletically elaborated 
chemical process, taking place in strict dependence 
upon and interaction with the stimulating influences 
of the medium. The living substance, as revealed to 
perception, is scientifically found to be a highly com- 
plex chemical substance, whose vitality consists in a 
specific chemical concatenation of occurrences, involv- 
ing and constituting the entire organism which it com- 
poses. " Life," a mere abstract concept, it need hardly 
be mentioned, is not — as often thought — a foreign 
entity inhabiting and actuating a mechanical organism. 
It is the inherent activity of that which constitutes the 
living substance; an activity which is manifest as its 
vitality, and which essentially distinguishes it from all 
other perceptible existents. 

'Hie stimulating influences of the environment func- 
tionally disintegrate the living substance in definite 
ways. But such functional disintegration is at once 
followed by reintegration to complete structural and 
functional integrity by force of affinitive combination 
with complemental "nutritive" material. It is this 
life-constituting function of specific disintegration on 
stimulation from without, and specific responsive rein- 
tegration from within, that governs and gives rise to 
all other functions of life. Functional disintegration 
creates the most insistent organic needs, those of hunger 
and sleep, psychically manifest as irresistible cravings. 

In order \<> satisfy the former almost all modes of sen- 

tiency and of motion are sel going and forced into ser- 
ruld almost appear as if all functions of life 

exist- ly for the sake of satisfying the craving of 

hunger. Yet the truth is. that the sustaining of the 



3 14 Biological Solutions 

structural identity of the organism, and its develop- 
mental elaboration in interaction with the influences 
of the medium, has ever been and remains throughout 
the most essential and significant outcome of vital activ- 
ity. The seemingly all-compelling ravenous feeling of 
hunger, for whose satisfaction almost all other vital 
functions are actuated, is in verity of subordinate im- 
portance, though necessarily and most insistently impli- 
cated in the carrying on of life. It is as conscious sign 
wholly subservient to the self-preservation, and further 
development, of the organic individual, through struc- 
tural reintegration, and progressive elaboration. In 
the same way the other all-important and insistent 
organic craving, that of sex, is wholly subservient to 
the preservation and further development of the race. 
In a certain sense it may be said, " Der Hunger und die 
Liebe erhalten das Weltgetriebe" but by no means for 
their own appetative self -gratification. Organic needs, 
consciously realized as insistent cravings, are really sub- 
servient to the living being's life of outside relations 
organically embodied in the ectoderm. It is the func- 
tioning organs of the ectoderm, sensory and motor, 
with all their centrally elaborated combinations, that 
bring us into actual contact and relation with the out- 
side world, in interaction with which our normal crav- 
ings find alone normal satisfaction. Through their 
progressive elaboration the conscious content becomes 
more and more an all-revealing medium, affording us 
more and more complete information regarding the 
outside world, developing thereby more and more cor- 
rect and refined emotions in relation to it, which en- 
ables us to guide our social and ethical conduct of life 
towards higher perfection, through the instrumentality 
of voluntary actions. 



The Sensori- Motor Agent 3 I S 

Biologically expressed, the functions of the ento- 
dermic organs are subservient to the functions of the 
ectodermic organs, and nowise is the reverse the case, 
as virtually asserted by hedonistic philosophers and 
ascetic zealots. The subserviency of entodermic to 
ectodermic functions the present writer has positively 
ascertained and demonstrated in his biological re- 
searches concerning the vital functions of the living 
substance, and has brought this positively ascertained 
fact to bear against the biological views of Bichat, and 
the philosophical teachings of Schopenhauer, l who both 
maintain the subserviency of the life of outside rela- 
tions to that of the life of intrinsic cravings, appetites, 
or passions, to which it is indeed all too often perverted 
against its normal import. 

It has to be admitted that sentiency and motion, or 
psychical and physical phenomena of every kind, are 
two incommensurable modes of experience. Hence 
Cartesian dualism and psychophysical parallelism. 
How, then, can the unitary living substance possibly 
be a sensori-motor agent ? How can it be an existent 
that embodies as its essential nature, and manifests as 
its essential functions, these two wholly discrepant attri- 
butes of intrinsic mental states and extrinsic bodily 
motions — attributes which Spinoza vainly sought har- 
moniously to unify as determinations of one and the 
same absolute substance? The living substance of the 
biologist actually embodies both attributes, being en- 
dowed with sentiency and also with motility, with 

hical awareness and also with physical activity. 

lint, although it is the bearer of such wondrous world- 
revealing and world-influencing efficiencies, it is infi- 

1 See " Kthic^ ami Biology," " International Journal of Ethics," 

Oct. 1894. Also " i ;■ mi, " hut 



3 l6 Biological Solutions 

nitely remote of being like Spinoza's absolute substance, 
also the one-and-all, or like Fichte's Ego the world- 
creating power. It is merely a peculiarly endowed 
individuated existent among innumerable other indi- 
viduated existents, and wholly dependent from moment 
to moment on its interaction with the outside world 
surrounding it. 

The ancient psychicophysical riddle embodied in the 
living substance or living organism whose solution has 
been attempted in this treatise remains still a crux of 
philosophical and scientific interpretation. It is prin- 
cipally accountable for genuine philosophical dissen- 
sions. In illustration of it, it is instmctive to examine 
the part it has recently played in the attempt to explain 
the nature of emotions. Here it has led William James 
and C. Lange to look upon these conscious states as 
being physically aroused by bodily commotions cen- 
tripetally conveyed to the seat of consciousness and 
felt there as mental emotions. For, so it is argued, 
eliminate "all the feelings of bodily symptoms," and 
there would be nothing left to constitute the emotion. 
Into this argument or theory it is evident that the 
entire psychophysical riddle is implicated wholly un- 
solved. It is simply taken for granted that physical 
modes of motion have somehow power to cause psy- 
chical modes of awareness to arise, or that the physical 
phenomena are directly felt as psychical phenomena. 
Such occurrence, if it really took place, would indeed 
be rightly held to be an incomprehensible mystery ; and 
as such philosophy and science have both declared it 
to be. A physical motion cannot rational y be con- 
ceived to cause, produce, give rise to, or influence in 
any direct manner the conscious state accompanying 
it. Of course, it is quite true that if the motor out- 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 317 

comes of the emotional activity of the organism actu- 
ally perceived by onlookers, or imagined by them as 
perceptible, were not present, neither would the psy- 
chical outcomes felt as emotion by the agitated subject 
be present. But the sensorially perceived bodily mo- 
tions or commotions forming part of the "cool," mere 
"cognitive" conscious content of onlookers is nowise 
that which is felt as emotion, or which gives cen tripe- 
tally rise to emotion. For how can anything I actually 
perceive, or imagine as perceived by me, have direct 
influence on anything you are feeling? On the other 
hand, the felt emotion is just as little that which gives 
rise to the concomitant motor phenomena which I per- 
ceive, and which as such form part of my own conscious 
content. These two sets of phenomena; the physical 
forming part of the conscious content of any number of 
present onlookers, and the psychical phenomenon, the 
emotion, forming exclusively part of the conscious con- 
tent of the subject who experiences it ; these two utterlv 
diverse sets of phenomena do not and cannot in the 
least influence one another. They are, however, both 
outcomes of the same vital activity. The psychical 
outcome, the emotion, is directly inwardly felt by the 

ted subject; the physical outcome, the bodily mo- 
tions, are — - on the contrary — indirectly and out- 
wardly perceived by means of sense -stimulation by 
whatever onlooker may be present, the affected subject 
among the rest. 

li is of paramount importance to psychical as well 

■ physical science, thai this actual state of things 
should be clear] gnized. It will be well, there- 

scrutinize it a little closer. An emotion 1 
: different kind chical experience from 

that of a percept, for instance. The former is fell local- 



3 l8 Biological Solutions 

ized within the organism, the latter is perceived as 
localized outside the organism. Yet they are both 
psychical states of one and the same organism; the 
former is affective, the latter cognitive. A pain is 
generally felt localized at a definite spot on or in the 
organism, an emotion almost anywhere within the 
organism. But of whatever kind a psychical experi- 
ence may be, affective, cognitive, or conative, it does 
not directly include the awareness of bodily organs and 
their motions and commotions. Unless I am an anato- 
mist and physiologist I have no knowledge of what 
exists under my skin, no knowledge of the existence of 
my bodily organs and their functions. Consequently, 
emotions, as actually experienced, do not involve, nor 
convey the least conscious awareness of, internal bodily 
organs and their commotions, and can nowise be di- 
rectly or introspectively referred to such. 

It is entirely through different means, namely, 
through sense-perception, that outsiders, or the af- 
fected subject himself, gets anatomically and physio- 
logically to learn what organs exist under the skin, 
and what functions of them correspond to an emotion, 
or, indeed, to any conscious state. That which is actu- 
ally perceived, or recollectively imagined, as bodily 
concomitants to psychical states, forms part of the on- 
looker's conscious content, and only symbolically sig- 
nalizes what really takes place in the living being. It 
is, as already stated, the same vital activity psychically 
felt as emotion, which is also physically perceptible by 
means of sense-stimulation, as motion or commotion. 
But the emotion, as a conscious state, does not give 
rise to the perceived commotion, nor does the percep- 
tible commotion give rise to the emotion as inwardly 
felt. 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 3 l 9 



^ 



To declare that it is the commotion. of bodily organs 
that centripetally propagated to the brain causes the 
emotion to arise, implies: either that bodily functions 
as physiologically known have power to produce the 
psychical state called emotion, or that the centrally 
propagated bodily stir elicits in some mysterious way 
the emotion from a psychical medium or entity which 
exists apart from the organic being, incomprehensibly 
bound up with it, and manifesting modes of awareness 
strictly corresponding to definite bodily modes of com- 
motion. James rightly aims at basing psychological 
occurrences on biological foundations, or at least at 
disclosing their interdependence. In this experiential 
endeavor he finds himself, however, foiled for lack of a 
scientifically and rationally justified epistemology. He 
finds himself compelled, much in Descartes's dualistic 
way, to assume a psychical medium somehow subsisting 
but not organically incorporated in the living being; a 
medium existing independently of it, receiving tele- 
graphic messages through the senses, that travel along 
the nerves, and on reaching the brain are somehow 
conveyed to the psychical sphere, and interpreted there 
in its own psychical terms. In this view the bodily 
commotions are mere signals apprehended and trans- 
lated into modes of conscious awareness in a super- 
organic region, and the organism itself plays the part of 
a mere mechanical contrivance, wholly unaware of the 
message it receives and conveys. One of the puzzles 

is, how the organism with its motions, as a mere 
mechanical contrivance, can be itself consciously 
known, for consciously known are only the psychical 
messages, and the bodily signals are here nowise them 
selves psychical messages, and can, therefore 1 , not be 

known to exist. The same applies to the organism as 



3^o Biological Solutions 

a whole, when thus conceived as a telegraphic appa- 
ratus. 

Howsoever ingeniously guarded, such dualistic views 
lead to inextricable confusion, starting no end of in solv- 
able problems, impeding the course of a true inter- 
pretation of natural phenomena. Among these ficti- 
tious problems involved in the psychophysical riddle 
one of the foremost and most momentous is the nature 
of volitional actuation, conceived as a psychical activity 
giving rise to voluntary movements. It is utterly in- 
comprehensible how volition, as a psychical occur- 
rence, can possibly cause a purposive movement to 
take place, or how any other kind of vital activity can 
be influenced by any conscious state. The incompre- 
hensibility of interaction or intercommunication be- 
tween psychical and physical occurrences has indeed 
been conceded by philosophical and by scientific 
thinkers. 

Readers who have given attention to the epistemo- 
logical solution of the psychophysical riddle offered in 
this treatise, and also in a number of previous publica- 
tions, and as having just been applied to the nature of 
emotions, will understand in what sense the living sub- 
stance may be rightly regarded as a sensori-motor 
agent. The reiteration, at this juncture, of the solu- 
tion of the psychophysical riddle, which may be thought 
rather tedious, would be omitted, if its fundamental 
importance to philosophy and science, urged for the 
last twenty-five years, had been recognized, or its 
alleged validity refuted. As it stands, the only hope of 
its gaining attention is to show again, how its applica- 
tion to philosophical and scientific problems clears up 
obscurities and mysteries involved in current interpre- 
tations. To be sure, it plays sad havoc with idealistic 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 321 

as well as with materialistic systems. But it is by no 
means far-fetched, and is capable of being positively 
demonstrated as based on obviously given facts of 
experience. In the instance here under special con- 
sideration, the task is to show how what is perceived 
as the living substance can be a psychical and also a 
physical agent, combining in itself inseparably and 
harmoniously the two seemingly incompatible attri- 
butes of mind and body. 

Once more then : it having been epistemologically 
shown that the philosophical investigator is justified in 
assuming the real existence of a plurality of living be- 
ings like himself, carrying on their life independently 
of his casually perceiving them; it cannot be denied 
that the motor or physical outcomes of the vital activ- 
ity of the living substance composing the organism of 
an observed subject, are the outsider's or onlooker's 
aspect and conscious awareness of the activity taking 
place within this observed subject. The concomitant 
and strictly corresponding psychical outcome of this 
activity is, on the other hand, the observed subject's 
own experienced conscious awareness of it, as an occur- 
rence taking place exclusively and directly within him- 
self, wholly unshared by onlookers. What conduces 
here to rather complicate this otherwise simple and 
obvious extrication from the psychophysical entangle- 
ment is introduced by the additional fact that the 
observed subject who exclusively experiences the direct 
psychical phenomena as outcomes of certain vital activ- 
ities within his own being; that this subject shares, 
moreover, with outsiders the perceptual awarenes 
the motor or physical aspect of this activity. For his 

ill exactly the same roundabout. 

stimulated way as those of any other onlooker. And 



322 Biological Solutions 

as the motor or physical phenomena perceived by on- 
lookers certainly form part of their own conscious con- 
tent, and can therefore not possibly have any influence 
on what takes place within the observed subject, the 
same must obviously obtain with regard to this sub- 
ject's own perceptual awareness of the motor or physi- 
cal outcomes of his vital activity. 

Evidently the perceived motor or physical outcomes, 
arising within the conscious content of onlookers on 
sense stimulation, can only symbolically and inade- 
quately reveal and represent in terms of perceptual 
awareness the real nature of the vital substance and 
its activities. For such awareness consists of nothing 
but visual and tactual sensations and perceptions 
which are as forceless and evanescent as all other con- 
stituents of the conscious content. The truth is, both 
sets of phenomena, the psychical and the physical, as 
actually experienced, are alike conscious states, and 
therefore essentially of the same nature. Only they 
occur in different subjects, or independently of each 
other in the same subject. They are different out- 
comes of the same vital activity. Certain vital activ- 
ities of the living substance or organism are sentient to 
itself only, but are also perceptible as motor or physical 
outcomes to outsiders. A so-called mind-reader, who 
is really a motion-reader, is such an outside percipient. 
He reads the motor outcomes of the same vital activity, 
which is experienced as a psychical occurrence by the 
subject whose mind he is supposed to be reading, while 
he is really aware only of tactual sensations indicative 
of the motor outcomes of the subject's vital activity. 
His own tactual sensations correspond, through the 
mediation of the motor phenomena, to the mental states 
of the sensori-motor subject he is in contact with. 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 3 2 3 

When a physiologist calls certain nerves "sensory 
nerves," and other nerves ' 4 motor nerves ; " also certain 
regions and pathways in the brain "sensorial," and 
others ' ' motor, " — he directly infers the motor character 
of the latter to be actually perceptible. As regards 
the sensorial character of the former, he only indirectly 
infers them to be bearers of sentiency, and to be of 
psychical import to the subject he is observing. This 
he concludes solely through analogy to his own sentient 
experience. Motions are perceptible, sensations are 
imperceptible to outsiders. When pinching a nerve 
which he perceives as belonging to an observed subject, 
the observer sees this subject flinch or hears him scream, 
he analogically concludes that the subject has con- 
sciously experienced pain, and calls on this account the 
nerve a "sensory nerve." He can experiment in a 
similar way upon himself, and ascertains then directly 
by means of his own sensation, that the hurt to what 
is outwardly and perceptually revealed to him as a 
certain nerve is followed by the definite sensation he 
inwardly feels. But it is not the perceptual nerve 
forming part of his conscious content that causes or 
lias anything to do with the pain. It only signalizes 
to him the real, extra-conscious existent directly instru- 
mental in causing the pain. 

Forming part of his own conscious content the physi- 
ologisl perceives as signs of vital activities occurring in 
an observed subject nothing but modes of motion, or 
he Legitimately infers the existence of such motions in 
organs he has previously examined, and which he is 

now consciously aware of as memorized and imagined. 

In this way certain motions in perceptible sensory 
organs arc imagined as being propagated along so- 
called sensory nerves to central organs, and then de- 



3 2 4 Biological Solutions 

seen ding, modified thereby, along motor nerves, to end 
in perceptible muscles, whose contractile function as 
final outcome of the unbroken series of motions is then 
actually perceived by the observer, and recognized as 
purposive, instinctive, or reflex action. There is here 
nowhere room for the intercalation of any mode of 
sentiency between the different modes of motion astir 
within the neural organs that constitute the continu- 
ous motor track from beginning to end. As perceptu- 
ally revealed, all neural organs are exclusively motor. 

It is here that the psychophysical riddle offers itself 
directly for solution in its most obvious form. To the 
physiologist there is nothing actually present but modes 
of motion occurring in certain organic structures. How, 
then, can a mere vibration or tremor of neural particles 
give rise to the conscious state concomitantly experi- 
enced ? How can a definite neural commotion produce 
within the neural structure any mode of consciousness, 
any thought, sensation, emotion, perception — the per- 
ception, for example, of an entire landscape, or of a cer- 
tain visitor ? The psychophysical problem thus formu- 
lated is undoubtably in solvable. To explain it, it is 
sometimes asserted that the neural commotion, as a 
mode of energy, becomes converted into its correspond- 
ing conscious state, as another mode of energy. But 
this is not only incomprehensible ; it is quite impossible. 
For the neural commotion is in fact propagated along 
the entire neural track. If it were anywhere in its 
course converted into a conscious state, there would 
be no further motor outcome. The telegraphic inter- 
pretation, on the other hand, assumes the organism to 
be a mechanical contrivance receiving messages in 
motor signs, and conveying the same to a psychical 
medium, where they are psychically translated and 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 325 



& 



understood. This mode of interpretation, popularly 
and theologically current, is doubly incomprehensible. 
For it is avowedly incomprehensible, how mere neural 
motor taps can be received and consciously interpreted 
by an extra-organic wholly incommensurable psychical 
agent. And this incomprehensibility is doubled when 
it is asked, how the incommensurable psychical agent 
is able, moreover, to start from its extra-organic habita- 
tion the motor activity which executes intelligent pur- 
posive movements at the other end of the telegraphic 
apparatus ? This profound psychophysical puzzle gives 
rise to time-sanctioned superstitions, which exert a 
vast influence on human aspirations by giving them a 
wrong and unprofitable direction. 

There remain some other attempts to solve the psy- 
chophysical riddle, Of these the conscious-automaton 
theory, involved in Descartes's mechanical interpreta- 
tion of vital phenomena, has since been adopted by 
prominent thinkers, and is virtually or avowedly the 
leading theory of most biologists up to the present day. 
In this view psychical awareness is believed to have no 
influence whatever upon life and its vital activities, but 
to be a mere epiphenomenon ineffectively accompany- 
ing the mechanical functions of a material automaton, 
which functions are set going by the combustion of 
externally supplied fuel. In this theory all that percep- 
tibly occurs in life is mechanically necessitated, and 
conscious awareness is consequently an entirely super- 
fluous addentum. 

On the other hand, the recognition that all we are 

directly aware of consists of nothing but conscious 

S or modes of awareness, has led a number of philos- 

and lately also a number of scientists, to ad 
idealism as their scientific en ed. 



326 Biological Solutions 

ism yields, however, no rational system of knowledge 
without the introduction of manifold extra-conscious 
or non-ideal agencies, of which, as indispensably impli- 
cated, latent memorized experience is the most im- 
portant. 

To avoid endless wrangling concerning the psycho- 
physical nature of our experience, many scientific 
thinkers, candidly acknowledging it a problem as yet 
unsolved, have adopted as a provisional hypothesis 
that of psychophysical parallelism. 

Sensations and other modes of awareness being 
clearly mere forceless, transient phenomena, psychical 
science must necessarily fail in its attempt to construct 
the world out of such flimsy evanescent stuff. And 
motion being itself one of these forceless modes of 
awareness, physical science wrongly attributes to it 
forceful, all-efficient actuation. Rightly and legiti- 
mately it can consider modes of motion to be only sig- 
nals that perceptually reveal efficient activities that 
are at work in the realm of extra-conscious existence. 
Perceptible bodies, generally regarded as material 
existents, are as actually perceived made up of nothing 
but the percipient's own transient modes of awareness. 
This truth is incontestable. But it is legitimate to 
infer from manifold data, that the perceptual modes 
of awareness signalize real extra-conscious entities 
endowed with all the efficiencies that become manifest 
in the multifold modes of cognitive awareness. 

What is perceptually revealed as the living sub- 
stance or living organism is in reality such an extra- 
conscious, relatively permanent entity subsisting in 
interaction with other perceptible, extra -conscious 
existents. Although as consciously perceived, when- 
ever and wherever onlookers may become aware of it, 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 3 2 7 

it consists then only of a complex of transient percep- 
tual phenomena. The scientific investigator who per- 
ceives as forming part of his own conscious content the 
organism and its functions, and who by means of labo- 
rious research has come to learn its perceptible ana- 
tomical constitution and its physiological functions ; a 
knowledge latently harbored, as remembered experi- 
ence of his own individual self, within the extra-con- 
scious matrix whence his accumulated experience issues 
into actual awareness; this scientific investigator, so 
richly informed of all that is perceptible regarding the 
organism he has examined, remains thereby wholly 
uninformed in any direct manner of what is psychically 
experienced by it. And as nothing psychically occur- 
ring within the observed subject is itself perceptible, it 
is certain, therefore, that that which is perceptible as 
the organic being does not consist of anything known 
as psychical, not of the ephemeral mindstuff of which 
dreams, visions, and indeed all actual awareness are 
made of. The organic being is obviously a non- 
mental, power-endowed existent which is only symboli- 
cally revealed in perceptual awareness; an existent 
found to have been, body and mind, toilsomely elabo- 
rated into enduring organic consistency during phyletic 
development; an existent endowed with significant 
modes of action and reaction gradually acquired in 
interaction with the medium; an existent endowed 
above all with the power of preserving its identity amid 
constant change, and which on account of it has to be 
regarded as the only genuine substantial being known. 
ital interaction with the medium with its twofold 
outcomes, the psychical outcome directly informing the 
organism itself of its relations to the environment; the 
physical outcome informing onlookers in a roundabout 



328 Biological Solutions 

way of its presence, space-occupancy, and motor activ- 
ity; this twofold outcome of vital activity on the part 
of the living substance entitles it to be regarded as a 
sensori-motor agent. 

Although the perceptual revelation of the living 
organism, which arises in the conscious content of the 
biologist, only symbolically represents in terms of visual 
and tactual awareness its presence and characteristics, 
and although this perceptual awareness has no efficient 
influence whatever on the real existent and its activi- 
ties so vividly and minutely represented thereby; yet 
all scientific knowledge regarding what is perceptible 
as the organism and its functions is gained in this 
roundabout way of sense-stimulation and vicarious 
representation. Mere introspective exploration of mem- 
orized experience randomly accrued in the common 
course of life, and through its modes of physical and 
social struggle and satisfaction, has proved eminently 
bewildering and insufficient to yield anything like true 
knowledge regarding the real nature of our own being 
and the world at large. The many deep-rooted super- 
stitions, engendered in the attempt to merely guess at 
the real conditions under which human life is carried 
on, and prevailing as beliefs in its guidance ages upon 
ages previous to the scientific era, had one by one to be 
overcome against strenuous resistance by direct and 
systematic scientific investigation of real facts of nature 
experientially given. This is indeed the only way by 
which true knowledge can be attained. The dialectic 
juggling with mental concepts still resorted to ; concepts 
believed to be self -sustained and self-acting entities, 
cannot possibly evolve any kind of knowledge not pre- 
viously experientially gathered and individually mem- 
orized, and especially no knowledge concerning what 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 3 2 9 

is solely perceptually revealed through sensorial experi- 
ence. It is somewhat strange that conceptualists per- 
sist in denying the indispensable primary part sensorial 
experience is playing in the formation of all manner of 
concepts, when the actual proof is being undeniably 
afforded by persons congenitally deficient in sense- 
perception. Nay, language itself is clearly sense- 
derived and sensorially apprehended. And without 
language it is admitted that there can be no concepts, 
and consequently no conceptual thinking. To con- 
ceptual thinking, at the very least, tactual linguistic 
signs are indispensable. For scientifically untrained 
philosophical minds conceptual juggling is, however, 
a supreme delight. In illustration of it read the inept 
conceptual emanations of many Young-Hegelians, or 
the master's own conceptual deductions of clerically 
established theological dogmas and existing state in- 
stitutions. 

Within the direct, scientifically uninformed aware- 
ness of his own conscious content the living being has 
not the remotest inkling of the minute anatomical 
structures and complex physiological functions that 
underlie the appearance of this his conscious content 
with all its variously significant distinctions, no inkling 
of what issues it into actual awareness, and sustains it 
there. Solely, then, through close attentive investi- 
m of what is revealed in perceptual awareness re- 
garding the organism and its functions can be gained 
.in understanding, how the living substance or organ- 
ism comes to be alive, by what means it has structurally 
and functionally developed so as t<» stand in definite, 
ifold interactive relations to its medium, and which 
of its structures and functions are concerned in the 

harboring and issuing of its conscious content, in the 



33° Biological Solutions 

acquisition of its accumulating and latently preserved 
experience,' and in its conduct of life through guidance 
of such gathered experience. Of all this information a 
priori conceptual deduction can know absolutely 
nothing. 

Innate, inherited, and organically constituted poten- 
tial molds of what Kant calls conceptual categories 
certainly exist before any experiential influx is cast 
into them. The same obtains with regard to percep- 
tual molds, respectively organized in the sphere of the 
various organs of sense of the sensori-motor individual. 
Whoever is conversant with what has been scientifically 
ascertained regarding the minute, wondrously com- 
plex structure of the brain as perceptually revealed, 
cannot but deem it unconscionable to imagine that 
psychical modes may just as well, or even better, arise 
into awareness freed from the incumbrance of all these 
organized structures and their vital activities. How 
completely dependent on vital organization and vital 
function so-called conceptual categories actually are, 
becomes evident, for example, when the nature of the 
category of substantiality is scientifically investigated. 
It was found that the permanency and identity main- 
tained amid change by the substance which constitutes 
the living organism, and which manifests its all-reveal- 
ing conscious content; it was positively found that 
this enduringly sustained identity wholly depends 
upon, and is solely rendered possible, by the living sub- 
stance being continually restored to identical integrity 
through reintegration, after suffering disintegration 
during its interaction with the influences of the medium. 
Hence nutritive assimilation, hunger, and sleep. It is 
this organically vital process which alone constitutes 
the substantiality of the living substance, and enables 



The Sensori-Motor Agent 331 

the fleeting phenomena of the conscious content to 
reflect, with rainbowlike phenomenal repose, the identi- 
cally abiding nature of the extra-conscious existents 
they symbolically signalize. 

As to causation, the other most important of Kant's 
categories, wrongly declared by Schopenhauer to be 
the only important one, it is obvious that the reference 
of an effect or occurrence to an antecedent cause pre- 
supposes the organically connected memory of the 
previous conscious experience, and this memory of 
something past can be harbored only in the organic 
matrix of the conscious content. Vital organization 
and its activities, symbolically revealed to perception, 
underlie all conscious awareness. " 

The knowledge of the sensori-motor individual is 
acquired by means of his organized faculties potentially 
predisposing him to attain it through actual experi- 
ence. These faculties have been unconsciously organ- 
ized within his extra-conscious being during phyletic 
elaboration, and are also unconsciously reproduced in 
the individual during his embryonic evolution. They 
have been thus organized through constant vital inter- 
action with, and in relation to, the influences of the 
medium; which same influences are in future again to 
the organic sensibilities of newly born offspring, 
and to arouse in them definite organized responses and 
significant reactions, whose conscious awareness con- 
stitutes by means of reiterated experience, and pre- 
eminently by means of scientific results, the growing 
knowledge of themselves and of the world at large. Con- 
scious awareness aroused through external or internal 
incitement, conveying information to the living being, 

which he receives, feels, and apprehends as a complex 

of actual and memorized modes of his self-feeding, is 



33 2 Biological Solutions 

that which constitutes him a sensory or psychical agent. 
The active, attentive, apperceptive, recognitive reac- 
tion upon and in relation to such sensory or psychical 
information, is that which constitutes him a motor 
agent. This motor activity is exercised not only in 
actuation of outwardly perceptible reactive movements. 
But where in higher forms of life a fund of memorized 
conscious experience has been gathered by the individ- 
ual, it is exercised also in the habitual or premeditated 
choice of definite modes of motor actuation in relation 
to the accumulated fund of memorized experience, 
which is here in representative signs simultaneously 
presented for choice to actual awareness, and is serving 
as guidance among many possible ways in the following 
of the chosen path. All motor activity is perceptible 
to outsiders, and forms as modes of perceptual motion 
their sense-stimulated awareness of it. All psychical 
outcome of the vital activity is, on the contrary, im- 
perceptible to them. Both outcomes of vital activity 
primarily and during the entire course of phyletic devel- 
opment, emanate from one and the same living being, 
and constitute him a sensori-motor and ideo-motor 
agent. 



VII. SENTIENCY AND PURPOSIVE MOVE- 
MENTS ' 

In watching living beings of whatever kind, be they 
plants or animals, be they protophyta or angiosperms, 
protozoa or vertebrates, the purposiveness of their 
movements in relation to their medium cannot be mis- 
taken. Life at all its stages is fundamentally condi- 
tioned by interaction with the medium. The spring 
of all vitality, that which sets it going and keeps it 
quickened, is functional interaction with existential 
conditions afforded by the environment. The living 
substance has always stood in three different direct 
and vital modes of necessary dependence upon its given 
medium. First upon the stimulating influences which 
specifically incite the sensorial functions; second, upon 
the nutritive supply which furnishes the complemental 
material for reintegration following functional disinte- 
gration ; and third, upon the supply of atmospheric 
oxygen necessitated by the depurative process leading 
to the elimination of waste products. These vitally 
indispensable modes of interdependence and interac- 
tion presuppose an intimately preestablished harmony 
between every function of the organism and the condi- 
tioning and actuating factors of the medium. It is 
useless to seek for the origin of life where these interde- 
pendent processes between the living substance and its 
medium are not operative, for they arc- themselves that 
which constitutes 1: 

1 Read before the T. I k>2. 

I 



334 Biological Solutions 

The sense-stimulating and sense-stimulated inter- 
action takes place at the organism's surface of contact 
with the medium. The stimulating influences impinge 
upon it, and disintegrate more or less deeply the living 
substance, whence the disintegration thus started 
spreads inwardly, and would eventually cause the en- 
tire substance of the living being to deteriorate and 
waste away, unless met and arrested by adequate rein- 
tegration from within. The peculiar susceptibility of 
the living substance to being thus affected and func- 
tionally disintegrated by external stimulation, and its 
ability thereupon to regain full integrity and identity of 
constitution; this unique interplay of functional rein- 
tegration following functional disintegration, is that 
which essentially constitutes its vitality, and which 
involves in its train all other vital functions. By force 
of it the living substance — as explained in a former 
section — comes to be the only genuine substantial 
existent in nature. For it alone maintains its identity 
though continually undergoing changes. It is, in fact, 
a veritable vortex of change amid which it rescues its 
identity by constant reintegration. Here Bichat's defi- 
nition of life receives its true significance. "La vie est 
V ensemble des fonctions qui resistees a la rnort." 

It is important to emphasize in this connection, that 
the living substance, as conditio sine qua non of being 
alive, is constitutionally, and from the very beginning 
out and out adapted to its medium. Adaptation to 
the medium is coeval with life itself. It is not addi- 
tionally brought about in any roundabout way. It is 
structurally and functionally molded from the very 
start through direct interaction with the medium at the 
surface of contact with it, and involves in consequence 
the entire organism, because all its parts, structures, 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 335 

and functions are interdependently connected. Surface 
or ectodermic structures and functions are of necessity 
adapted to the stimulating influences whose disin- 
tegrating tendencies they have to counteract, as essen- 
tial condition of their existence and maintenance. 

The most conspicuous auxiliary function of vital 
activity is that of appropriating nutritive material, by 
means of which the living substance is enabled to rein- 
tegrate itself when functionally disintegrated. The 
continuance of life is obviously wholly dependent on 
the supply of "nutritive" material. Consequently, 
this mode of adaptive dependence of the organism upon 
its definitely given medium must be also coeval with 
life. Life, as something that can exist apart from it, is 
biologically unthinkable. Hence the superlatively in- 
sistent part need of nutrition is playing in animal 
life, turning our world into a vast arena of preying and 
being preyed upon. 

The imperative need of atmospheric oxygen proves 
to be another most urgent mode of dependence upon 
the medium, which is likewise coeval with life, and 
necessitated to prevent asphyxiation by oxydizing and 
rendering thereby eliminable the waste products of 
functional disintegration. Breathing, whose function 
is to exhale oxydized waste products and to inhale new 
oxygen, is manifestly so essential to life that foxi, 
irv^fUL. are/xo?, anitna, all terms signifying "breath," 
conceived as an entity capable of infusing into inani- 
mate matter "the breath of life." lias been for many 
centuries believed to l»c itself the veritable principle of 
life. And certainly life without breathing, and conse- 
quently without supply of oxygen, cannol possibly 
exist. To believe otherwise is altogether fanciful. 

In these three fundamental and essential ways, then, 



33^ Biological Solutions 

is the life of the organism imperatively dependent upon, 
and therewith constitutionally adapted to its medium. 
Progressive organization of living beings during phy- 
letic development, manifest as elaboration of these 
three fundamental modes of vital interaction with the 
medium, represents perceptibly more and more com- 
plex and efficient structural and functional adaptation 
to the manifold ways in which the external influences 
have power to directly affect the individual's wellbeing, 
and indirectly that of the race. Considering how in 
consequence of the interaction of the organism with its 
medium a gradual complex attunement of its sundry 
surface regions to sundry specific modes of stimulation 
has been actually attained ; an attunement which draws 
with it the formation of specific sensory organs, an 
adjustment of the entire sensori-motor organization of 
the ectodermic structures, and draws with it, further- 
more, corresponding organization of the organs that 
have to supply it with specifically elaborated restitutive 
material, and also corresponding organization of the 
organs that have to eliminate the waste materials of 
disintegration ; considering these obvious facts, the con- 
clusion lies near that the organism as a whole is adap- 
tively plastic to the influences of the medium. Some 
of these influences affect fundamentally all organisms 
alike, such as surface stimulation, supply of nutritive 
material, and supply of oxygen. There are, however, 
many other special influences and conditions of the 
medium amid which organisms had from generation to 
generation to carry on their life, and to which they 
have become specially adapted through modifications 
of structure and shape. 

In order to gain an understanding of the correlative 
modifications of structure and function, which fit an 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 337 

organism in all its parts to life in a special medium, 
it has to be remembered that the entire living substance 
constituting an organism is from the very start cor- 
relatively organized as a unitary existent, all parts of 
which are organically and functionally interdepen- 
dent. And although the organism possesses the power 
to maintain amid constant change its essential identity 
with astonishing exactitude and persistency, it is 
nevertheless subject to modifications wrought from 
within, and also to modifications forced upon it from 
without. The most striking evidence of adaptive 
plasticity is afforded by paleontological research, 
especially by examples of analogical adaptation of 
different classes of animals to life in the same special 
medium. Such analogous adaptation is most obviously 
displayed in aquatic and flying animals. Among 
aquatic vertebrates are found fishes, reptiles, and 
mammals, whose respective general shape and organs 
of locomotion are astonishingly similar in appearance. 
Among flying animals a number of widely different 
kinds are adapted to their special medium. All this 
testifies to the adaptive plasticity of the organism in 
relation to the medium in which it has to carry <>n its 
life. 

The question here arising is the much vexed question 
regarding the means through which adaptation of the 
organism to its medium is brought about. It has 
been shown that the fundamental modes of adaptation 
are coeval with life, and that they determine the gen- 
eral organic constitution of the living substance. They 
are wholly dependent on direct, indispensable inter- 
action with the medium, and cannol possibly be the 
result of any kind of selection among preexisting 
forms of lit.- Further adaptation to a special medium, 



33% Biological Solutions 

terrestrial, sub terrestrial, aquatic, and aerial, is wrought 
through modifications of the three primordial modes 
of adaptation, simultaneously with other modes of 
adaptive modification, always in persistent vital 
interaction with the special medium in relation to 
which the special modification is taking place. Adap- 
tation of sensory, nutritive, and respiratory organs 
and their function accompany all along modification 
of the general shape of the organism and those of its 
locomotive apparatus. The organism being a unitary 
whole, whose functions are all interdependently con- 
nected, modification of any of its essential parts 
involves modification of its entire structure. 

Adaptation to a changing environment, or adapta- 
tion to more minutely specific influences of the medium, 
such as that undergone by the organs of sense, are 
wrought upon the form, structures, and functions 
previously adapted to life in the former medium. 
But all special adaptations are wrought upon the 
fundamental modes of adaptation that are coeval 
with primitive life, and they are acquisitions of the 
indiscerptible organic being, inwrought into its original 
constitution, not pieced on to it through additional 
aggregation of elementary units. 

As to the general shape of primitive animals, the 
primordial result of interaction of their living sub- 
stance with the medium is the assumption of a bipolar 
and bilateral form, as explained by the present writer 
in his biological papers. The determining influence 
of the medium in the fundamental shaping of the 
organic form is directly observable. Starting, then, 
from this originally given state of things; an oral and 
an aboral pole of the bilateral, as yet morphologically 
unorganized, living substance, the first essential task 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 339 

is to ascertain in what manner and by what means 
the differentiating, specializing, and developing elabor- 
ation of the surface of contact of the organism with 
its medium has been brought about. The primitive 
amoeboid being, through and through chemically 
fluent, attains in the course of development a stable 
surface structure, while the interior substance remains 
still fluent, as seen in infusoria. Such surface equili- 
bration is brought about essentially by adequate rein- 
tegration restoring at once on the spot the chemical 
gap caused by functional disintegration in interaction 
with the stimulating influences of the medium. Slight 
unfavorable conditions are seen to upset this surface- 
equilibration. Organizing structural elaboration works 
its way from the surface inward, involving ultimately 
the entire substance of the body, differentiating and 
specializing it into distinct organs, all ministering to 
progressive modes of interaction of the organism 
with its environment. In the ectoderm of higher 
forms of life it is found to have resulted in the forma- 
tion of sensory organs specifically and diversely 
adapted or attuned to diverse specific stimulating 
influences, and conveying thereby whatever direct 
information the animal has of th^ perceptible world. 
Through what process, then, has so marvelously a 
fitting of organic conditions to external conditions 
been attained ? 

It is now generally believed that useful chance- 
variations arising at the sensory surface, unaided by 
direct cooperation of the stimulating influences t<> 
which the sensory organs have eventually become 
specifically adapted, that such useful chance-variations 

are in the struggle for existence preserved and trans- 
mitted to offspring. Through gradual accumulation 



34° Biological Solutions 

of such preserved useful variations the attuned sen- 
sory organ is held to have been at last more or less 
perfectly organized as at present found. This inter- 
pretation, though entirely at variance with fundamental 
biological principles, has been strenuously advocated, 
The recognition of the gradual organic development 
of living beings from lowest beginnings to ever higher 
stages in the scale of life ranks rightly as one of the 
foremost, if not the very foremost, acquisition of 
scientific knowledge. No biologist at present doubts 
that the organism with its developed sensory organs 
has most gradually attained its present state of organ- 
ization and adaptation. The question is, by what 
means ? 

Surely, it is unconscionable that slight useful chance- 
variations, cumulatively selected during ever so long 
a period could have resulted, for instance, in our 
present organ of vision, with all its centrally organized 
belongings, in which the entire universe with all 
perceptible things stands vividly revealed. It goes 
against rational thought and instinct to credit such 
a stupendous world-revealing outcome to the mere 
heaping up of chance occurrences. In this current 
interpretation of progressive organization through 
natural selection of chance-varieties, the fundamental 
biological principle left out of sight is the evident 
and often acknowledged one that function determines 
structure. Structure is stable only in morphological 
appearance, and quite especially so in the cooked 
preparations generally used for morphological investi- 
gation. Morphological appearance is, however, a 
functional outcome or perceptible result of definite 
vital activity. Functional inactivity is followed by 
structural atrophy; and complete cessation of vital 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 34* 

activity is followed by complete structural disorgani- 
zation and cessation of life. Obviously the living 
substance becomes progressively organized through 
functional interaction with the medium, and it is 
specialized function that gives rise to organic differ- 
entiation. Specializing function has differentiated, for 
instance, neural protoplasm from muscular protoplasm, 
and their respective morphological appearance is 
functionally maintained and not mechanistically stable. 
Within the sheath protecting and isolating the spe- 
cialized protoplasm of nerve and muscle, the living sub- 
stance itself is in constant functional flux, and receives 
its intimate morphological constitution from its spe- 
cialized function . Whoever has carefully watched under 
the microscope living muscle in functional activity, 
and also the morphological disorder following arrest 
of normal function, 1 cannot fail to become convinced 
that the morphological appearance of the living proto- 
plasm of muscular fibers is functionally established and 
maintained. It is vitally fluent substance, and nowise 
stable machinery. The physiological function of living 
structure is essentially only a definitely heightened out- 
come of the same vital activity by which it is constituted . 

It is function, then, and not primarily structure to 
which specialization and adaptation are really due. 
What would the morphologically specialized appearance 
of an adapted sensory organ signify to the organism 
if no adapted function were underlying it; if it were 
not the perceptible potential bearer of the specific 
.sensorial function which alone can serve the organism 
as guiding information specifically adapted to con- 
ditions of the medium:-' Surely it is pertinent to ask, 

1 See " Pur Lehre von <lcr MusheUontraction " (Pflueger's 

Archiv. i8ftO 



34 2 Biological Solutions 

what function of the sensory organ is really of use to 
the organism. What is it that has here at the sur- 
face of contact of the organism with the outside world 
become specifically and significantly adapted to exter- 
nal conditions? Quite obviously not the mere mor- 
phological appearance of the organic structure, nor the 
mere sensory and neural commotion mechanically 
caused by the impact of- the stimulus. Under such 
an interpretation the morphological appearance of 
organic structure remains utterly enigmatic. It is 
clearly, above all, the sensorial outcome, the psychical 
response on the part of the self -feeling organism that 
is here of essential importance. It is the sensorial 
feeling of the organic being that has become aimfully 
and significantly specialized and adapted in relation 
to the influences of the medium ; and what is perceived 
as structure and its functional motion is the anatomist's 
and physiologist's outside perceptual view of what has 
been extra-con sciously established in the observed 
subject. 

Physiologists, if determined — as some have lately 
declared to be — to adhere strictly only to what is 
perceptually revealed, debar themselves therewith from 
the right to take any notice whatever of psychical 
phenomena, and from using psychical terms in the inter- 
pretation and expression of biological facts. In this 
predicament there can exist for them no " organs of 
sense, " but only certain morphological structures whose 
functions are exclusively mere modes of motion. 
These investigators are no longer justified in looking 
upon the eye as an organ of vision, or upon the ear as 
an organ of hearing. To them all vital functions are 
solely modes of motion, and their science, reduced 
thereby to pure applied mechanics, aims as its final 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 343 

achievement at a mathematical expression of inter- 
dependent modes of motion displayed by morphological 
mechanisms. Such, indeed, is at present the avowed 
scientific creed of most biologists, emphatically pro- 
fessed on a recent occasion by almost all of the assem- 
bled representative scientists. Yet it would seem 
evident that they mistake thereby the fundamental 
nature of vital processes. For the activity of the living 
substance composing all organisms emanates from 
an intrinsically elaborated and phyletically cumulated 
potency, essentially non-mechanical in both its mani- 
fest outcomes; in its direct psychical outcome within 
the acting organism, and in its indirect outcome per- 
ceptible as modes of motion to outsiders. Vital 
motions resulting in purposive movements adapted 
to a complex and changing medium cannot be mechan- 
ically explained. 

Here again we find that we cannot escape the psy- 
chophysical riddle, if we desire to gain a more profound 
insight into organic life than is afforded by mere per- 
ceptual appearances within the conscious content 
of the investigator, eminently instructive as these 
are in various ways. We have, moreover, to discover 
what these appearances really signify to the per- 
ceptible and conscious subject to which they refer. In 
this light the real significance of what are perceived 
as organs of sense is their sensorial or psychical func- 
tion in relation to the stimulating influence of the 
mm. For no other reason are they called " organs 
of sense" by physiologists. 

Taking, then, a comprehensive view of sense stimu- 
lation, it is found to be a far more recondite process 
than its mechanical interpretation of Unpad and im- 

ed motion would lead UStOSUSpect. When I tactu- 



344 Biological Solutions 

ally feel what is called "air," this is undoubtedly a 
definite sensation arising within my conscious content. 
I rightly attribute it to a definite stimulating influence. 
When I, furthermore, physically discover the fact that 
a certain number of air-tremors or waves in a second 
which reach my auditory organ causes to arise in my 
conscious content the specific sensation of a definite 
sound, I find myself doubly entangled in the meshes of 
the psychophysical riddle. For in probing what is 
really meant by air waves, generally believed to be the 
agents stimulating the auditory organ, and eliciting 
thereby in some incomprehensible manner the sensa- 
tion of sound, I am forced to conclude that I am merely 
naming in terms of visual sensibility the same inferred 
stimulating influence, that, besides visual sensations, 
also arouses tactual and auditory sensations ; for waves 
are obviously visual phenomena, and cannot as such 
be stimulating agents. The real efficient agent that 
possesses the power of arousing in me through affection 
of my different senses or sensibilities such specifically 
different sensations ; this extra-conscious agent, en- 
dowed with definite powers remains unknown as such, 
revealed only in the sundry sensorial effects it arouses. 
When the attempt is made to neglect in the process 
of stimulation the psychical effects, and to interpret it 
in purely mechanical terms, then, though ignored by 
mechanistic thinkers, the psychophysical riddle inevi- 
tably intrudes between themselves and their object of 
investigation. For — adhering to the same example — 
the air and its motion which the mechanistic thinkers 
take to be the real agents that stimulate what they per- 
ceive as the auditory organ, are certainly as such only 
forceless, transient perceptual appearances within their 
own conscious content, due to definite stimulation of 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 345 

their own senses. In contemplating the shadow they 
overlook the real substance by which it is cast. On the 
strength of these undeniable facts it may be concluded 
that, as the nature of the stimulating influences be- 
comes only symbolically revealed through the psychical 
effects they arouse in the organism, these influences 
must be extra-conscious potencies endowed with spe- 
cific powers capable of affecting the living being in 
definite ways, through which their presence and charac- 
teristics become revealed to himself as specific modes of 
functionally aroused self-feeling or awareness, and re- 
vealed also to outside investigators as definite modes 
of motion imparted to definite structures. The all- 
revealing compass of the conscious content is itself 
made up of forceless, transient phenomena in constant 
flux. It is, consequently, in the realm of extra con- 
scious existence and efficiency that real existents have 
power to affect one another in definite ways, which 
affections in the sensory sphere of the living being be- 
come consciously manifest. 

The sensorial effects are found strictly to correspond 
to the stimulating influences, and to have significance 
only in relation to them. This essential fact seems to 
indicate that these efficient influences, whose intimate 
nature remains unknown, have had all along power t<> 
cause the living substance to be organically molded, 
and functionally attuned or adapted to life in the 
medium, whose existence and characteristics are made 
known through the stimulated sensorial outcomes. 
Sensory Structures and their functions, found matured 
;it birth in certain animals, attain in others their matur- 
ity under the direct influence of definite stimuli. And 

it lias been ascertained that the visual centers of pre- 
maturely born infants mature more rapidly under the 



34 6 Biological Solutions 

direct stimulus of light than they would have matured 
inside the womb. In plant life the direct dependence 
of definite development upon definite stimulating influ- 
ences is still more obvious. 

As perceptually revealed to investigators, the struc- 
ture-elaborating efficiency of the stimulating influences 
can to a certain extent be recognized ; especially in rela- 
tion to the definite stimulating influence visually mani- 
fest as " light" when at work on the living substance of 
plants. Here definite functional disintegration through 
the impact of ''light" affords the stimulus whereupon, 
during reintegration from within, the protoplasm at- 
tains by means of affinitive substitution a somewhat 
higher composition. In the laboratory higher organic 
compounds are likewise elaborated on this plan of grad- 
ual affinitive substitution, whereby higher constituted 
complemental molecules take the place of less complex 
ones. Under this aspect it is rendered somewhat intel- 
ligible how through such gradual elaboration a defini- 
tive reactive response on the part of the living substance 
has become organically attuned to a definite mode of 
stimulation. Of course, it remains wholly enigmatic 
by what specific potency chemical compounds are en- 
abled by assimilation into their intimate constitution 
to form higher and higher unitary combinations, with 
new and higher modes of action and reaction in relation 
to the influences surrounding and affecting them. We 
come here face to face with the same creative mystery 
obtaining with regard to all, even the most simple, 
modes of combination and interaction. The intimate 
nature of being and becoming ; of primordial world-stuff 
and its progressive elaboration into definite interacting 
existents ; of perceptible nature at any present moment 
and its further development in the future ; all this actual 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 347 

existence with its creative activities seems in essence 
to be impenetrable to human understanding. 

It would be passing strange if the culminating 
achievement of progressive development, the won- 
drously, complexly correlated organization of living 
beings, adapted through and through down to its 
minutest structures to modes of life in a definite 
medium ; if it had really resulted from selection among 
an endless series of chance-variations, that brought 
with them at uncertain times an infinitesimal advan- 
tage in the same useful direction in relation to the 
primordially specific and eventually minutely speci- 
ficated influences of the medium. Into interaction 
with this medium the individual is born in utter 
dependence upon it. Yet its influences all along, from 
moment to moment, indispensable to life during its 
entire phylectic career, are held to exercise no active 
formative stress upon its development, which essentially 
consists in becoming progressively attuned to them. 
It is true, biologists often attribute formative effi- 
ciency to specific kinds of nutriment. Nutriment plays, 
however, but a subordinate part in organic develop- 
ment, being principally subservient to the integrative 
needs of the ectodermic organs, where progressive 
elaboration of the living substance really starts. 

It shall not be denied that natural selection tends to 
erve individuals best equipped for the struggle for 
existence, and to weed out those not so well equipped. 
But the adaptation itself, of which the entire organi- 
zation is out and out a visible expression, is surely 
constitutionally wrought by means of incessant inter- 
action with influences endowed with specific powers 
efficient to work specific changes, that with necessity 
result in a more and more ample and perfectly adapted 



34-8 Biological Solutions 

organization of the living substance or organism for 
its life in the medium with which it has been phyletically 
in constant interaction, and in which interaction its 
life essentially consists. Of course, the more complexly 
a species of living beings is organized, the more scope 
is there given for individual varieties, or for mutations 
forecast in the constitution of the reproductive germ, 
which in its minute compass harbors potentially and 
prospectively the multifold characteristics inherited 
by the organism to be developed therefrom. Scope 
for varieties is also given through the sexual blending 
of two separately and somewhat differently organized 
germs. But no essential deviation from the out and 
out phyletically adapted type takes place within 
normal limits, for otherwise the all but rigorous 
organic equilibrium which secures faithful reproduction 
of the kind would be profoundly upset, and develop- 
ment of monstrosities would be the general result. 

The living substance may, then, with sufficient 
reason be deemed plastic to the influences of the 
medium affecting it in the form of certain perceptible 
existents, and of certain modes of radiant energy. 
And the progressive elaboration of its organization 
may be held to result principally from its interaction 
with the sense-stimulating influences. 

The vital phenomena hitherto noticed have been 
mostly of the perceptible kind. They compose the 
biologist's vast field of direct research, and are revealed 
to him in terms of his own perceptual awareness. But 
what about the investigated being himself? What 
active part does he play in the progressive structural 
elaboration of his living substance carried on in relation 
to the environment ? As function determines structure, 
the use of an organ maintaining it, and its disuse 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 349 

leading to deterioration, it is clear that structures 
whose functions have to await direct or indirect 
initiative actuation on the part of the individual, 
and those in higher organism that are directly depen- 
dent on volitional actuation ; it is clear that the effi- 
ciency of such structures is maintained by the use of 
them. Moreover, a greater than normal call for the 
use of an organ gives rise to its greater structural 
development, as most strikingly evidenced in the mus- 
cular development of athletes. That such volitional 
actuation determines the elaboration of structure is 
also positively proved by intentionally executed actions 
becoming through frequent performance automatic. 
This evidently indicates that definite structural modi- 
fications have been wrought, which not only facilitate 
future conscious actuation, but which furthermore 
become on stimulation unconsciously self-acting. Our 
entire bodily and mental education is rendered possi- 
ble by such volitional elaboration of structure retain- 
ing definitely imposed modes of modification, and func- 
tioning thereupon automatically. On normal and 
abnormal stimulation structures fixedly established exer- 
cise their function automatically, without being con- 
sciously actuated. This is strikingly the case, normally 
in dreams, and abnormally on hypnotic suggestion, in 
somnambulism, and on stimulation by drugs and dis- 
eased blood. Without such automatism of educa- 
tionally elaborated structure a rational flow of speech, 
for instance, would be impossible, and it is reasonable 
to conclude that it must have been the use of speech 
continued and developed during countless generations 

that has succeeded in elaborating the wondrously 

complex organization of the special structures thai 
functionally minister to linguistic- expression. Still 



3S° Biological Solutions 

structure ever so highly and fixedly organized remains 
structure composing the indiscerptible individual, to 
whom all this elaboration and its functional significance 
accrues as possession of his own. 

By becoming functionally automatic the structure 
of the living substance remains nevertheless sentient. 
For its sentiency forms part of its very being and life. 
What is more especially called "consciousness" con- 
sists in the direct awareness of what is organically 
occurring. Such awareness is a functional outcome 
of the activity of central and centralizing organs. 
Attention, a central activity under volitional control, 
renders us, for example, conscious of our breathing, 
which is generally automatically, though not insen- 
tiently, carried on. Any interference with its autom- 
atism is instantly felt, and locally referred to what 
are perceptible as the functioning organs. That the 
breathing individual possesses, moreover, to a certain 
extent volitional control over his breathing, shows 
how automatic functions, especially those of complex 
structures that act in direct response to definite 
stimulating influences, stand more or less under the 
volitional control of the individual, occasionally 
exercised over them. 

The function of structures or organs, that have been 
elaborated in direct interaction with and correspon- 
dence to specific stimulating influences of the medium, 
bears necessarily a purposive character in relation to 
them, although automatically performed. Intention- 
ally volitional actuation in relation to the medium 
comes into existence and is developed in measure as 
accumulated and memorized experience causes to 
arise in the present moment of conscious awareness a 
simultaneous complex of such memory, presenting 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 35 l 

therewith a complexity of means and ways for volitional 
choice. Before such memorized experience has come 
to accrue to the disposition of conscious volitional 
choice, and before the primitive and general self- 
feeling of the organism has been developed into 
specifically centralizing consciousness, the function of 
structures becoming specifically elaborated in vital 
interaction with definite influences of the medium acts 
reflexly, instinctively, or automatically on such stimu- 
lation in sentient response to it, but without con- 
scious realization and choice. Experience, though not 
consciously realized, has been accumulated and organ- 
ized in the acting sensori-motor structure ; for its very 
constitution is the result of such experience. Figura- 
tively, then, this consciously unrealized experience may 
be considered to rest organically memorized in the 
experientially elaborated structure, 1 and its function 
may be looked upon as an acquired habit. 

The living substance and its structure once firmly 
established through functional elaboration as that 
which perceptually appears as a specific chemical 
compound, has then as such demonstrably a power- 
ful tendency of its own to maintain its integrity against 
deteriorating influences by means of reintegrative 
assimilation of complemental material. To this intrin- 
sic- power of reintegrating itself is due its maintained 
integrity amid constant change, and above all the 
marvelous reintegration of the adult organism from 
a minimal reproductive germ. A germ lias to be 
regarded as a chemical fragment of the adult organism 
from which it is derived, and which it has to repro- 
duce through reintegration. This has been ascertained 

1 Sec Bwaid Hering, "On Memory " 



3S 2 Biological Solutions 

through direct research by the present writer. Such 
a germ contains, evidently, potentially all the charac- 
teristics of the organism it has faithfully to reproduce, 
and being sheltered from deterioriating influences and 
supplied with prepared nutritive or complemental 
material, it can achieve unhindered its task of gradual 
reintegration to eventual completion. It stands to 
reason that under such conditions — the organic 
individual being from beginning to end an indiscerpti- 
ble whole — any firmly and correlatively established 
structural modification of his living substance will be 
potentially represented in the chemical fragment or 
germ. derived from it. 

The mere cutting off of the tail of an animal, or any 
mere mutilation inflicted upon it, and continued for 
ever so many generations, cannot possibly lead to its 
becoming an acquired inheritance, because no correla- 
tive modification of the entire unitary organism follows 
the artificially imposed operation. It is only through 
out and out correlative elaboration of the living sub- 
stance of the organism in interaction with its medium 
that modifications become organically fixed and then 
transmitted to offspring. All organs and functions of 
an organism are correlatively interdependent. An 
organic change in any part or organ draws with it a 
correlative change in other organs, in order to restore 
equilibrium among them. This is strikingly illustrated 
when, for example, the size and function of the heart 
increase in measure as abnormal obstructions have to 
be overcome by its action, or, again, when on deteriora- 
tion of one of the kidneys the other becomes structur- 
ally and functionally developed in order to restore the 

1 See "The Unity of the Organic Individual," "Mind," 1SS1. 
Also " The Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm," 1904. 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 3 S3 

correlative equilibrium of the structures that compose 
the individual. 

Correlative modifications accruing to the structures 
composing the organism are, and have ever been, 
individual acquisitions, for they are necessarily wrought 
upon the living substance of individuals during their 
lifetime, and could not persist from generation to 
generation if not transmitted to offspring. It is not 
too much to say that the diverse organization of all 
forms of life is the outcome of the transmission to 
offspring of correlative structural modifications cumu- 
latively elaborated during the vital interaction of 
individuals with their environment. To deny that 
increments of progressive elaboration of structure 
acquired through functional activity are not trans- 
missible to offspring is to attribute to random chance- 
occurrences all structural development hitherto 
attained and in future to be attained. In vain have 
foremost biologists taxed their imagination to explain 
how progressive tendencies are acquired by their 
assumed ultimate units, believed by them to constitute 
the reproductive germ, and to build up the organism, 
either by self-multiplication (Darwin, Weismann, De 
Vries), or by spontaneous generation (Spencer, Haec- 
kel, Naegeli). It is wholly enigmatic how such ulti- 
mate units, held to have been originally of a very 
simple kind, and to have composed very primitive 
organism; how they have in the course of time become 
so radically and specifically modified and developed as 
eventually to be able in some unaccountable manner 
to build up by multiplication and aggregation the 

tlishing complex and yet intcrdcpendentlv organ- 
ized structure of higher forms of life; forms of life thai 
are moreover through and through adapted to inter- 



354 Biological Solutions 

action with a definite medium. In various ingenious 
ways has the perplexed thought of biologists labored to 
overcome the insuperable difficulty attaching to the 
modification and development of ultimate units as- 
sumed to compose higher organisms. The utter failure 
of all these attempts has been at length exposed by the 
present writer on various occasions for more than 
twenty-five years, and no biologist has as yet ven- 
tured on a defense of this attack, which all too plainly 
discloses the fatal weakness of the position. 1 

In order to undergo progressive modifications, the 
assumed organic units believed to compose the germ 
would have to evolve them out of their original fund of 
endowment, which would mean that they are primordi- 
ally organized with a mysterious tendency progressively 
to develop, as maintained by Naegeli, and as Leibnitz 
asserted to be the case with his monads. In fact the 
assumed ultimate units of the biologists resemble in 
many respects the monads of Leibnitz. Haeckel even 
declares his plastidules to be primordially endowed with 
psychical faculties of a high order such as "memory" 
of past occurrences, and believes that all psychical phe- 
nomena result from the composition of besouled mate- 
rial atoms. The fundamental misconception under- 
lying these attempts to make something higher result 
from the mere aggregation of elementary units has its 
roots in the belief that the properties and functions of 
inferior autonomous beings can unite so as to give rise 
to a synthetic product of a higher order than that which 
they themselves represent, which is impossible. 2 

1 See "The Unity of the Organic Individual," "Mind," 1881. 
" Molecular Theories of Organic Reproduction," "Texas Academy 
of Science," 1895. " The Vitality and Organization of Protoplasm," 
1904. Jenasche Zeitschrift fur Naturwissenschaft," 1882. 

2 See " The Dependence of Quality on Specific Energies," " Mind," 
1880. 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 355 

It is obviously of the highest importance in many 
respects to recognize that the functional activity of the 
individual, and especially his volitional activity, can 
progressively elaborate structure, which is transmis- 
sible to offspring. In fact, initiative activity on the 
part of the individual has been the most important 
factor in the elaboration of animal structure, as pale- 
ontologically demonstrated by Cope in his "Primary 
Factors of Organic Evolution." 

But what part does consciousness really play in or- 
ganic life? It is epistemologically a highly suggestive 
fact that the living and acting individual is nowise 
himself directly aware of his own organic constitution, 
and therewith of his own means underlying his vital 
activity. His phyletically elaborated organization, 
which enables him to perceive more and more distinctly 
and comprehensively the outside world, and consciously 
or sentiently to react upon it in complex ways conduc- 
ing to his welfare ; of all these his anatomical and physi- 
ological belongings, so distinctly perceptible to the 
biologist, he himself is wholly unaware. He does not 
even directly know his own eye, by means of which the 
vision of the entire perceptible world makes its entrance 
into his being. His vital activities all take place with- 
out his having the least direct knowledge of the struc- 
tural means that underlie them and through which they 
arc actuated. Here, then, we come inevasibly face to 
face with the principal vexed problem in science, in 
philosophy, and in ethics, — a problem that has staggered 
thinkers of all times. Are living beings really, as per- 
ceived by the biologist, or as perceptible by him, out 
and out structural machines set going by mechanical 
means; machines whose modes of motion have become 
developed through natural selection or similar mechan- 



3S 6 Biological Solutions 

ical ways, to perform appropriate movements in rela- 
tion to a given environment? Certain it is that no 
mode of consciousness can impart the least motion to 
any organ or member of the organism. It cannot be 
denied, therefore, that the biologist's objective or purely 
perceptual view consistently leads to a mechanical inter- 
pretation. Mechanical automatism, certain motions of 
a complex structural machine, is all he detects from his 
point of view. 

Changing, however, the point of view, and contem- 
plating gathered experience introspectively, which ex- 
perience as conscious awareness has been recognized 
to include all we are directly cognizant of, what we 
perceive as our environment, and what we are conscious 
of as our own being and its activities in relation to its 
environment, turns out to be the only directly and 
actually given data out of which our entire knowledge 
becomes constructed. And this means that all we 
immediately know forms part of our conscious content, 
and is consequently of conscious or ideal consistency. 
Modes of awareness of whatever kind are an exclusively 
subjective experience unshared by any other being. 
And as they make up our all-revealing conscious con- 
tent, which in its transient moments of actual aware- 
ness contains all in all we consciously realize as our own 
existence and the world at large, it constitutes thus the 
magic solipsistic circle which excludes all outside exist- 
ence, out of which no philosopher has yet succeeded 
in escaping and in legitimately reaching with his 
thought any kind of outside world. This intimate, 
immediate psychical experience absorbs into itself the 
biologist as perceived, and with him his entire seem- 
ingly objective view. On the strength of this directly 
given and all-inclusive psychical experience, naturalists 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 357 

are seriously beginning to discard in their interpretation 
all realistic implications seemingly involved, not ad- 
mitting that the psychical phenomena signify anything 
beyond themselves. It has been clearly shown in for- 
mer sections that this purely idealistic and solipsistic 
view leads consistently and inevitably to phenomenal- 
istic Nihilism. 

Granting, however, what has been at length episte- 
mologically justified, and what is practically never 
doubted ; namely, that the perceptual awareness of the 
conscious content signalizes the presence, character- 
istics, and activities of real perceptible existents, the 
essential question then arises regarding the relation 
which our imperceptible, unshared conscious content 
bears to our perceptible organism and its vital activi- 
ties as exercised in interaction with perceptible outside 
existents"' Are modes of awareness mere epiphe- 
nomena ineffectively accompanying modes of vital 
activity which are automatically or mechanically actu- 
ated ? Or are they in some way an essential and indis- 
pensable property of what is perceptible as the 
organism, and therewith a determining factor in its 
conduct of life? 

Having direct experience only of our own individual 
human consciousness, we must, before we can venture 
on any well-grounded inference regarding the part that 
sentiency plays throughout the scale of organic life, 
first find out what part it plays in our own life. As 
itedly urged, and, indeed, as generally acknow- 
ledged, nothing of conscious consistency, nothing psy- 
chical can set going or effectively influence any vital 
activity. Conscious states are wholly forceless and 
transient. The impression to the contrary experi- 
enced in the case of our voluntary movements; the 



35 8 Biological Solutions 

validity of physical and psychical interaction here in- 
tuited, has been shown to be wrongly inferred by 
recognizing that the perceived phenomena involved, 
consist really of mere sense-stimulated perceptual ob- 
jects. These apparently, but only apparently, cause 
commotion in the sensory organs, which commotion is 
then propagated along in-going nerves to central re- 
gions, and down again along out-going nerves to the 
muscles. Now, not only are actually perceived objects 
mere modes of perceptual awareness forming part of 
the observer's conscious content; but these perceptual 
occurrences form, moreover, an unbroken enchainment 
of physical events, leaving nowhere any room for the 
ingress of, or for means of producing intervening or 
interfering psychical phenomena or psychical actua- 
tion. The simple explanation of this want of efficient 
connection between the physical or perceptible phe- 
nomena and the psychical or imperceptible phenomena, 
was found, as repeatedly mentioned, in the fact that 
the former, the physical phenomena, are phenomena 
within the outsider's conscious content, while the latter, 
the psychical phenomena here referred to, are phenom- 
ena exclusively within the conscious content of the 
observed subject. This observed subject has no direct 
knowledge of the perceptually revealed belongings of 
his own being, and can, therefore, have no direct aware- 
ness of their modes of interaction. The impression of 
interaction, which, nevertheless, exists, is elicited in a 
roundabout way ; namely, by sense -acquired and mem- 
orized perceptual experience of one's own perceptible 
being. The feeling we experience when our heart is 
violently beating, or when our breathing becomes lab- 
ored, does not as such reveal in the least the existence 
and appearance of the heart or the lungs, and their 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 359 

peculiar mode of activity. Only when we have gained 
a perceptually revealed knowledge of the heart and the 
lungs can we attribute our feelings of their activity to 
them as thus perceptually revealed. 

"Granting, then, the genuineness of the realistic impli- 
cations of what appears in our conscious content, grant- 
ing the real existence of what is positively felt, believed, 
and relied upon to be in fact the life of real perceptible 
individuals in interaction with a real perceptible world ; 
granting that all this is not a mere insubstantial psy- 
chical phantasmagoria; it is surely a most pertinent 
desire to want to know what part the imperceptible 
consciousness or sentiency of perceptible beings is play- 
ing in their conduct of life. It cannot be denied that 
this question discussed more than any other, scientifi- 
cally, philosophically, ethically, and theologically, has 
as yet received no satisfactory answer. 

It is certain that all we are individually conscious of 
as our own being and the world at large exists only as 
the conscious content of our moment of actual aware- 
ness, called the present. This all-revealing conscious 
presence forms for each of us the felt, sensed, perceived, 
and cognized panoramic medium in which our life is 
consciously carried on. Although the content of this 
present awareness, in which we consciously have our 
being, and amid whose appearances we sentiently and 
consciously conduct our life; although it is only a tran- 
sient phenomenon, it is sustained as enduringly present 
by the vital activity of the organic matrix whence it 
issues, and it is essentially organized to focus in its 
moment of duration and spatial expanse a vast world 

of diverse psychical states. Among these states three 

groups of essentially different significations may be 
distinguished: first, definite intrinsic feelings of the 



360 Biological Solutions 

vital activity, of what perceptually proves to be the 
activity of definite organic structures. These "or- 
ganic" feelings are combined with feelings arising from 
organic needs and from their subsequent satisfaction ; 
second, cognitive modes of consciousness referring 
principally to outside existence, such as compelled per- 
cepts and their remembered and systematized ideas or 
concepts; and third, feelings of reaction in relation to 
influences which outside existents have or are expected 
to have on the well-being of the conscious individual. 

Here it is important to recognize, that no psychical 
state, no craving, no pain, no sensation, no perception, 
no thought, no emotion ; that, in fact, no psychical state 
has self -existence or self -significance, or is capable of 
being in reality segregated or isolated from its context 
as it actually exists within the all-embracing conscious 
content of the feeling subject. Idealistic systems, be 
they sensational, intellectual, or volitional, all work 
with such fictitiously and substantially hypostasized 
constituents of the conscious content, and lead, there- 
fore, to wrong conclusions. It is always the organic 
individual as an indiscerptible being who experiences 
as his own modes of affection the different conscious 
states that arise within his moment of actual aware- 
ness, and that convey to him the information which 
enables him to guide his life in relation to his complex 
environment. For the same organic individual is not 
only potentially equipped with accumulated and mem- 
orized psychical information ; he is also a force-endowed 
motor agent capable of effectively and appropriately 
acting upon such information. 

It is clear that the more ample and definite the 
conscious information of the individual happens to 
be, and on the other hand the more conducive to his 



Sentiency and Purposive ^Movements 3 61 

personal, social, and ethical welfare his conduct is 
carried on in relation to his psychical information, the 
more progressively rational will be his mode of life. 
The possibility of acting rationally, and not merely 
automatically, instinctively, or impulsively, is gained 
on the one side by the focusing of wide-reaching 
conscious information into our moment of actual 
awareness, and on the other side by our volitional 
control over what are perceptible as our executive 
motor organs, whose muscles are in consequence 
known as "voluntary muscles." I can move what is 
outwardly perceived, as my arm, in many different 
ways, and I can stop or inhibit the movement. In 
doing this I am directly guided by definite organic 
sensations which indicate to me from within in their 
own specific way the position of the member I intend 
to move. This knowledge accrues to me quite inde- 
pendently of what I or others can see and touch as the 
arm I am going to move. 1 It is true that the visual 
awareness of my arm can greatly assist my guiding 
consciousness, but it is a superadded adjunct to the 
purely intrinsic guidance. I am able to actuate my 
arm by the sole guidance of inward organic sensations. 
I can move it at random in any possible way I please 
without the aid of outward sense-derived guidance. 
But without such guidance I am utterly unable to 
perform intentional purposive movements. In order 
to be able to do so I have consciously to aim at what I 
directly perceive or indirectly recollect as attainable 
in the perceptible world. 

The essential difference obtaining between the direel 
inward awareness of our bodily belongings, and their 

1 Sec "Space anil Touch," "Mind," Vol. X . i - 



362 Biological Solutions 

indirect outward sensorial awareness ; the former being 
far more immediate and intimate than the latter; also 
the means of sensorial information and the matrix in 
which it is potentially gathered and systematized, 
together with the liberation of volitional from neces- 
sitated actuation, all these essential distinctions have 
been structurally and functionally accounted for by 
biological research. Their respective pathways and 
seats, displaying wondrously complex and minute 
organization with multifold intercommunications, have 
been perceptually disclosed by laborious investigation. 
To the biologist who has attentively and thoughtfully 
entered upon this fundamentally important study, 
purely idealistic views must appear strangely visionary. 
He can no more imagine psychical states existing 
independently of what is perceptually revealed as 
organized structure, than he can imagine a shadow 
existing self -sustained in vacancy. 

What is called a conscious motive to action is an 
intended motor actuation urged by some felt need or 
desire, and aimed at the attainment of a definite some- 
thing believed to exist in the outside world that will 
satisfy this need or desire. The so-called " motive" 
has itself no inkling of moving or causative power, for 
it consists altogether of psychical factors, and is there- 
fore a mere forceless complex of modes of awareness. 
The organic individual, as a force-endowed, extra- 
conscious existent, is here the real motor or causative 
agent, constitutionally endowed with the power to 
actuate at will those of his organs that bring him into 
direct connection with the outside world, in order to 
attain definite ends in relation to it, guided thereby by 
what is in direct presentation or recollectively present 
in his conscious content. 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 3^3 

When a definite sensation, percept, or idea is immedi- 
ately followed without conscious intention by an 
appropriate motor reaction, it would seem as if the 
psychic state were itself the moving power. The 
truth is that the actuation, like all actuation in nature, 
takes place altogether in unknown ways in the sphere 
of extra -conscious existence; and that the sensation, 
percept, or idea, seeming to cause the action, serves 
only as sentient signal to the organic sensori-motor or 
ideo-motor process, felt as a psychical state by the 
acting individual and perceptible as a motor outcome 
by outsiders. In consciously intentional actuation the 
mere guiding part which conscious states play in the 
process becomes unmistakably obvious. The ancient 
puzzle as to what part consciousness or sentiency play 
in the conduct of life, and in existence in general, 
is solved by recognizing that it indispensably and 
exclusively serves as guidance in all our actions. Of 
this there cannot be the slightest doubt. It is indeed 
almost self-evident. We are at all times obviously 
guided in our actions by what we are conscious or at 
least sentient of. The room I am sitting in, the land- 
scape outside, the wide world beyond, are as consciously 
perceived or imagined by me, incontestably a visual 
phenomenon forming part of my conscious content. 
And it is clearly by means of this visual phenomenon 
within my conscious content that I am guided in per- 
forming purposive actions in relation to what is tfius 
visually revealed. As soon as I shut my eyes, unless 
I have learnt to be guided by tactual feelings and 
their recollection, I have therewith shut, off my actual 
conscious guidance, and abstracting from visual 
remembrance I am completely at a loss to find my 
way, and to attain my aims in the perceptible world. 



364 Biological Solutions 

My actions, as consciously guided, are directly 
aimed at what is perceptually or recollectively present 
in awareness. When I go to move a chair which I 
perceive some distance off, the chair I therewith 
actually perceive forms part of my conscious content, 
and specifically part of its visual awareness. When 
I grasp the perceptible existent now visually present 
to me, I certainly do not really grasp this chair forming 
part of my conscious content, though to my own con- 
sciousness, and to that of outsiders, I seem to be 
moving what perceptually appears. But if I cannot 
possibly be moving the chair forming part of my own 
visual awareness, I am surely not moving the many- 
chairs forming part of the visual awareness of a number 
of outsiders. The visual chair might be altogether an 
optic illusion, though just as vividly present to me as 
if it were a real chair. In grasping it, however, the 
tactual feelings, and especially that of resistance, carry 
with them the assurance, or at least the conviction 
that I am grasping a power-endowed existent far more 
abiding and solid than the visual chair forming this 
moment part of my conscious content, and which 
vanishes out of existence whenever I shut my eyes. 
The obvious conclusion is, that my visual percept, and 
my tactual sensations spatially coinciding with it, 
signalize to me the presence and characteristics of an 
existent having its real being outside my conscious 
content, and subsisting quite independently of my 
casual awareness of it. It is this real existent that I 
am grasping and moving by force of my own real power- 
endowed organic being, and not by force of anything 
forming part of my conscious content. It is by 
means of a genuine preestablished harmony between 
the sense-stimulated visual chair and the sense- 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 3 6 5 

stimulating real chair, that the visual chair acts as 
reliable guidance in the execution of my intention to 
move the real chair. 

The medium or environment in which we con- 
sciously move, and whose perceptual appearances, or 
their memorized representatives direct our intentional 
motor actions; this consciously apperceived medium 
with all its diverse phenomena, consists entirely of 
slates of awareness composing our all-revealing con- 
scious content. And our intentional actions are not 
only guided by them, they are moreover directly aimed 
at them as they perceptually appear. It is wholly a 
matter of preestablished correspondence between our 
modes of perceptual awareness and the sense-stimu- 
lating influences of the outside world signalized by 
them, that these same actions of ours guided by 
perceptual awareness, and directly aimed at its appear- 
ances, are therewith brought into efficient interaction 
with the real extra-conscious world; that, for instance, 
the hunger I feel, and the apple I perceive, as forming 
part of my conscious content, are found on my grasp- 
ing and eating the apple — an operation consciously 
performed within the sphere of actual awareness 
to correspond in the extra-conscious world to a real 
apple which as property of its own is endowed with the 
means of appeasing my hunger. 

An insect sense-stimulated by outside influences to 
which its modes of sentiency have been specifically and 
correspondingly adapted, and impelled by organic 
needs in structurally and habitually established ways; 
this insect moves likewise wholly within the psychic 
medium composed of its sentient states, organic and 
sensorial, and is in its actions exclusively guided by 
them. These intrinsically actuated performances, per- 



3 66 Biological Solutions 

ceived and apprehended by outsiders as purposive and 
instinctive movements, are rendered efficient in the 
outside world by means of phyletically preestablished 
correspondence. This seems to be a justified analogical 
conclusion. 

The reason why the indispensable and exclusive 
office of sentient and conscious states in directing and 
guiding movements, inclusive of loudly or silently 
uttered speech, has so long been philosophically 
mystified and misconceived, this reason is found in the 
fact that materialistic and mechanistic views, on the 
one hand, have failed to recognize that that which is 
actually perceived is merely a forceless conscious 
phenomenon, and not the real force-endowed existents 
revealed and signalized thereby ; and that, on the other 
hand, idealistic views have denied the extra-conscious 
significance of perceptual awareness. You start with 
nothing but matter and motion, and necessarily a 
purely physical and mechanically moved world results, 
in which sentiency and consciousness are of no service 
whatever. Or you start with nothing but self -existing 
psychical states, aggregated, associated, or self -evolv- 
ing, and, of course, an insubstantial, purely phenome- 
nalistic world is the outcome, in which nothing can have 
enduring consistency and transphenomenal significance. 

In consciously intended purposive actions of any 
degree of complexity it is conscious memory that 
affords the principal guidance. Direct perception 
assists indeed step by step, but the focusing into the 
moment of actual awareness of such remembered 
experience as is connected with the intended action 
is really that which directs it as a whole, and enables 
it to be consciously and consistently carried out. 
Now it is evident that the latent potential accumu- 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 367 

lations and systematizations of experience capable 
of being consciously remembered in the moment of 
actual awareness, as well as the subtily intricate 
volitional power of performing intentional purposive 
actions ; that these faculties are developmental acquisi- 
tions of the highest order in the scale of organic life. 
Like every developmental acquisition these also have 
been organically elaborated within the living substance 
through functional activity in relation to the medium. 
Biological research has positively demonstrated that 
volitional, intentional, or skilled activity is a gradual 
acquisition superadded to reflex and instinctive modes 
of activity. Special pathways and central structures 
are proved to minister to such volitionally directed 
activities. And of these those ministering to speech 
are perhaps the most instructive with regard to depen- 
dence of definite modes of activity or function upon 
specific neural structures definitely localized. Articu- 
lation involving special organic sensations, audition, 
vision, tactual feelings, are all factors implicated in 
linguistic expression and comprehension. Special per- 
ceptible structures embody each of these different 
vital functions which are more or less intimately inter- 
connected and associated, forming thus a far-reaching, 
intricate sen sori -motor and ideo-motor complex. Their 
united import seems to be realized in the "Island of 
Kiel," constituting it a special organ of speech. Mani- 
fold definite defects of speech become perceptually 
traceable as dependent on disorganization of one or the 
other central region which contributes to linguistic 
expression and comprehension. And, as intelligent 
conceptual thought is admittedly dependent on lan- 
guage, and language proves to be wholly dependent on 

specific Organic Structure, it follows, that '■intelligence" 



3 68 Biological Solutions 

or " reason," believed by idealists to be a self -subsisting 
entity, is in verity a mere conceptual abstraction from 
the conscious phenomena that functionally issue from 
the specifically organized matrix of speech, perceptually 
revealed as definitely located neural structures. 

The organic matrix of speech, consisting of definitely 
revealed brain-centers, is an inheritance of phyletically 
elaborated structure, endowed with specific potential 
functions. In order that these structures may become 
functionally actuated in individual life, it requires, 
however, not only the mere stimulus of articulated 
signs, expressive of conscious experience, received and 
imitated; but it requires, moreover, the organic reten- 
tion of the structural traces of such definite articula- 
tion, together with its significance, in order to serve in 
future as guidance in volitional linguistic expression. 
Without linguistic education leading to such organically 
yielded information issuing from modifications of inher- 
ited linguistic centers, though these may have been 
perfectly efficient at birth, the individual would re- 
main speechless, and therewith devoid of such intelli- 
gence as is inseparably connected with speech. This 
want of conceptual intelligence is strikingly manifest 
in linguistically uneducated deaf and blind persons. 

Here it is relevant to remark that in speech the guid- 
ing import of consciousness in relation to purposive 
actuation is preeminently manifest. Speech as a phys- 
ical performance has no meaning whatever except in 
relation to consciousness. Its sole raison d'etre is to 
give physically efficient articulated expression to con- 
scious states, and to arouse thereby corresponding 
conscious states in other persons. If we consisted of 
psychical stuff only as Idealism maintains, speech 
would be impossible, and we would be not only imper- 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 369 

ceptible to one another, but our thoughts, if such we 
could then have, would be incommunicable. More- 
over, without speech, which is an individual acquisition, 
rational thought, and therewith "reason," would be 
non-existent. There is no escaping this conclusion, 
which is pregnant w r ith momentous implications. 

All consciously intentional or voluntary activities 
are in a more or less degree skilled activities, that have 
become more or less completely detached from the orig- 
inal reflex, instinctive, or purely impulsive modes of 
activity. When skilled activities become by dint of 
habitual performance secondarily automatic or executed 
without special conscious attention, such individually 
acquired automatism is not, as has been maintained, 
a relapse into the original automatism of lower centers, 
but is due to newly organized sensori-motor connec- 
tions within higher central structures, being an out- 
come of conscious experience, that can have become 
memorized and potentially stored only in higher central 
structures. 

The power of performing intentional purposive ac- 
tions is a specific functional endowment of our organi- 
zation, that has become developmen tally superadded 
to pure sensori-motor actuation. In order to gain 
introspective cognition of this volitional power of ours 
we need only experiment with our breathing. We are 
able volitionally to deepen it, to accelerate it, and to 
inhibit it for a while, until the normal automatically 
propelling organic need overcomes the intentional inhi- 
bition. This volitional control proves clearly to be a 
mode of actuation superadded to the mere automatic 
action. But that which empowers us thus volitionally 
to act remains withal inscrutable. We find that we 
can volitionally actuate certain apparatuses of our 



37° Biological Solutions 

organism. In what this volitional power itself con- 
sists we can form no idea. Volitional actuation is, 
however, no more enigmatic than that which underlies 
and propels purely automatic action. In fact, all man- 
ner of activity in nature, even the most simple kind, is 
only known to exist and to be at work through its mani- 
fest outcomes. Advocates of the mechanical theory of 
actuation deceive themselves when they believe they 
really understand what is giving rise to modes of mo- 
tion taking place through push or pull. So obscurely 
unintelligible is the power of a body to impart motion 
to another body, that the performance can be intellectu- 
ally assimilated only when placed in analogy to our own 
directly experienced though likewise enigmatic power 
of moving our own and other bodies. We move bodies 
by being organically endowed with the power of moving 
what are perceptually revealed as our members spe- 
cially adapted for the ends of such volitional actuation. 
It is a fatal mistake to believe that we understand 
activity in nature by asserting that it consists of what 
is perceived or felt as such, of nothing therefore but 
motion, or in case of our own movements also of feel- 
ings accompanying it. All activity in nature is per- 
ceptually and therewith merely symbolically revealed 
as modes of motion, and our self -activity, moreover, 
as intrinsic feelings. But, as repeatedly urged, motion 
is itself nothing but a mere forceless conscious sign of 
real activity, and nowise itself the veritable forceful, 
change-producing agent. The same forceless nature 
attaches to the sensation of effort and to other sen- 
sations of vital activity. They are all likewise only 
forceless conscious signs of extra-conscious activities 
that may perform their work at times quite without the 
accompaniment of conscious awareness. 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 37 1 

As already indicated, no volitional movement is 
possible without our becoming intrinsically aware of 
the special member we intend to move, and therewith 
of its definite position in space. If my intention is to 
move my great toe, I must first gain intrinsic awareness 
which singles out this special member from all the rest, 
and which informs me in which spatial direction I have 
to exert my volitional power. By means of specific 
organic sensations, constituting local signs, we have 
an intrinsic apprehension of the space occupancy and 
spatial form of our entire body, and especially of each 
of its surface areas, irrespective of visual and tactual 
exploration. 1 

In us human beings, next to articulate speech, the 
hand and its fingers are the members most intricately 
subject to volitional or skilled activity. Flechsig has 
computed that there exist more than one hundred 
thousand distinct neural paths in the service of voli- 
tional activity connected with tactual sensations. And 
he rightly concludes that this accounts for the minutely 
complex and graduated motility of the hand and its 
fingers. Helen Keller in one of her writings beau- 
tifully and pathetically praises the consciousness- 
informing potency of her hand, her only direct bond 
of union with her fellow-beings and the whole outside 
world, -her motil hand whose exquisitely sensitive 
touch is to her all-revealing. The surmised ideal Ego 
of transcendentalists must be a wondrously expert 
telegraphist to be able to tap in due coordination the 
one hundred thousand neural wires, of whose existence 
it has, moreover, not the least inkling. The physiolo- 
gist, however, can in a crude manner really tap these 
neural wires, and elicit thereby definite movements of 

' See •' Space and Touch," " Mind," Vol X. i 



37 2 Biological Solutions 

the hand, the fingers, and of most movable regions 
attached to "voluntary muscles." Either, then, these 
marvelously complex structural arrangements dis- 
tinctly perceived, and whose specific functions are 
physiologically and pathologically demonstrated, are 
what Idealism declares them to be, a mere illusion of 
sense devoid of realistic significance. Or, on the 
other side, the view of Idealism, vaguely and exclu- 
sively based on mere forceless and transient phenomena 
of solipsistic awareness, is itself a visionary conceit, and 
as such an utterly misleading interpretation of nature. 
The biologist, on the strength of our scientifically 
acquired knowledge of nature, cannot help looking 
upon the idealistic view, eminently elevating in many 
respects in the past, to be now a hindrance to further 
human progress. For to him progressive development 
is strictly dependent on elaboration of what is per- 
ceived as vital structure, attained through interaction 
with a complexly and progressively molded physical 
and social medium. 

Volitional power over our executive members would 
be of no avail, unless intentionally directed towards 
the attainment of a definite end in view. And this 
end is found only in the perceptually revealed outside 
world, be it social, artistic, scientific, be it craving for 
food or craving for aflectional or intellectual congen- 
iality. Volitional actuation in whatever direction 
exercised modifies structure, leaving it fit to execute 
more readily the volitional behests, and to harbor the 
potential memory of what has been intentionally 
achieved. No memorized experience, or result of 
volitional training, can abidingly exist anywhere but 
in what is perceived as organic structure. It seems 
strange that so obvious a fact is generally ignored with 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 373 

regard to neural structures, while it is unhesitatingly 
and indeed inevasibly admitted with regard to muscu- 
lar structure, whose volitionally attained development 
in bulk and in multifold modes of skillful execution are 
directly perceptible. 

It has been shown that, with us human beings at 
least, our intentionally purposive activities have neces- 
sarily to be guided by intrinsic as well as extrinsic 
modes of conscious awareness. The inward con- 
scious awareness of those organs that bring us into con- 
tact with the outside world, and the conscious awareness 
of this outside world upon which our activities have 
to l>e exercised; these modes of inner and outer aware- 
ness are found actually to guide us circumspectly and 
at every step in the execution of our purposive activities. 
It is clear, and has to be insisted upon in opposition 
to contrary views, that consciousness in all its modes 
has no other significance for life than to serve it as 
guidance in its interaction with the perceptible outside 
world. Without consciousness, without actual aware- 
ness of our organic, affective, or intellectual needs, and 
without the direct or memorized awareness of the 
objects of desire or of satisfaction belonging to the 
outside world or attainable therein, and of the con- 
ditions which admit of their appropriation or realiza- 
tion; without these various modes of consciousness 
there could be no intentional purposive activity, and 
therewith no human self-determination, no rational. 
no ethical condud . 

The purely mechanical interpretation of nature, still 

in the ascendant among scientists, maintains, on the 
contrary, and has consistently to maintain, that con- 
sciousness inclusive of all modes of sentiency plays no 

part whatever in the seemingly purposive activities of 



374 Biological Solutions 

organic beings; that all this can be satisfactorily ac- 
counted for by the mechanical theory. And, in aid of 
such mechanical interpretation of vital phenomena, 
so-called "tropisms" are brought forward. Mechani- 
cal contact, light, gravity, chemical action, electricity, 
are declared mechanically and adequately to set going 
the seemingly purposive activities of the organic mech- 
anism of living beings. Taking light as an illustration 
of its efficiency in giving rise to phenomena of tropism, 
a plant, for instance, is obviously affected by light. Its 
blooms either turn towards it and open through its 
influence, or they act in a reverse manner. On account 
of this the plant is said in the former case to be posi- 
tively, and in the latter case to be negatively helio- 
tropic. But is this behavior on the part of the plant 
really altogether due to heliotropic equilibration which 
requires symmetrical exposition to the stimulating influ- 
ence? The opening or shutting of flowers on exposure 
to strong light would rather seem to be an effect of 
phyletically established organic adaptation or ingrained 
habit, ^and not merely an effect of momentary stimula- 
tion. And how can tropism of any kind account for 
the automatically performed tentative gyrating move- 
ments of tendrils, whose purpose is evidently and visi- 
bly to find some object to wind themselves around? 
It would be no easy task adequately to account for this 
purposive habit. 

An animal might possibly attain heliotropic equilib- 
rium by being mechanically or structurally compelled 
to place itself so as to be symmetrically affected by light, 
and its cephalic pole would then point towards or away 
from the source of light because its optic mechanism is 
more forcibly stimulated by light than any other part 
of its body. But why the animal should, moreover, 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 375 

move towards or away from the source of light is no- 
wise explainable by the mechanical theory of tropism. 
It is, on the contrary, obvious that the locomotive 
movement of animals is principally propelled by inner 
organic needs, and not by external stimulation. A 
moth, and all night-prowling animals, move at ran- 
dom, urged by organic needs, especially those of hunger 
and sex, and are seeking more or less instinctively ob- 
jects of satisfaction in the wide world. They are spe- 
cifically attracted by those particular objects that will 
satisfy their needs, evidently guided thereby by organi- 
cally attuned sensations of smell, sight, and hearing, 
which reveal the presence of the object of satisfaction. 
Surely the far-wafted minimal particles of a definite 
odorous substance affecting the olfactory organ of an 
insect, a large beetle, for example, cannot possibly work 
so powerful a change in its structure as to cause its 
motor organs mechanically to impel its entire heavy 
body headlong towards the distant source of emanation ? 
In watching a dog eagerly following a certain track, 
how can one mistake that he is sentiently guided by a 
subtily specific sensation of smell selected from among 
many other kinds met on the road, and being, more- 
over, aware through memorized experience of the sig- 
nificance of this sensorial sign in relation to a definite 
existent to be found in the outside world ? No mechan- 
ical interpretation can account in the remotest degree 
for this highly complex vital performance of the sensori- 
motor and ideo-motor animal being. Nor can it ac- 
count for the simplest vital phenomenon. 

Adapted habits of living beings phyletically acquired 
in relation to their organic needs, and to the means and 

Ways of their satisfaction in the outside world, arc or- 
ganically or structurally fixed as potential abilities. 



37 6 Biological Solutions 

They are felt as needs when urged towards actuation, 
and are then guided in their execution by sensorial 
awareness. The biologist discovers perceptually the 
morphological appearances of structures underlying 
physiological functions. The organic being itself, 
driven by felt needs and guided by sensorial awareness, 
experiences only definite modifications of its self -feeling. 
These are, however, extra-consciously or extra-sen ti- 
ently connected with definite motor outcomes as per- 
ceptually revealed. The living being is throughout 
sensori -motor, but "sensory" inwardly to itself only, 
"motor" as outwardly perceived. Its structures, 
which embody the potential abilities, having been 
adaptively organized in specific relation to definite 
modes of stimulation emanating from outside existents, 
these modes of stimulation, when brought to bear, elicit 
the actuation of the potential abilities. An insect 
selects from all manifoldly different plants encountered 
on its way the one only upon which to deposit its eggs 
that will afford suitable food for its progeny. This is 
evidently due to a specifically organized relation be- 
tween the definite smell of the special plant and the 
insect's egg-laying need. The specific smell attracts 
and guides it to the particular plant, which elicits on 
contact its egg-laying function. 

It is organic adaptation to conditions of the outside 
world that brings about a definitely preestablished 
harmony between the functions of the organism and 
the external conditions in relation to which the func- 
tions are exercised. But the organic beings themselves 
are directly aware only of their own modes of self -feel- 
ing, some of which symbolically represent to them the 
real, extra -conscious world, accompanied by other 
modes of feeling indicative of the memorized experi- 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 377 

ence of the effects which the influences of the outside 
world have had, and are apt at present to have, on 
their own welfare. It is, then, by means of incited 
modes of self -feeling that living beings are guided in 
their actions. But the fact that their actions really 
accomplish in the extra-conscious world what they 
desire and aim at, is entirely a matter of preestablished 
correspondence between structural and functional 
adaptations and the real, effective conditions of the 
outside world. Let the guiding modes of self -feeling of 
the individual become disordered in their relation to 
the conditions of the outside world, and his actions will 
no longer correspond to what really exists in this out- 
side world, on account of which his mind is then said 
to be " deranged.'" 

The self-feeling of living beings has necessarily as 
many gradations of complexity and of inwrought dis- 
criminative modifications as there are gradations in the 
scale of life. The self-feeling of a being low in the scale 
of life, with only primitive tactual awareness of outside 
existents, will be of an entirely different order from the 
self -feeling of one high in the scale of organization, that 
besides developed tactual awareness is additionally 
endowed with a number of other sensorial modes of 
awareness, together with their synthetic combinations. 
The complexity and superiority of the entire organiza- 
tion of highly developed living beings has been phvlcii- 
cally wrought through superior adaptation of their 
manifold modes of sensorial awareness in response and 
in relation to the influences of the stimulating medium. 
What other meaning could the progressive elaboration 

of the world-revealing sentiency or consciousness pos- 
•iian growing fitness to functionally serve as guid- 

m the conduct of life carried on in relation to the 



37 8 Biological Solutions 

world thereby revealed, and to which it has become in 
all respects organically adapted? 

As to the real nature of the outside world, which be- 
comes thus progressively revealed through the develop- 
ment of sensorial awareness, and as symbolically repre- 
sented in the conscious content, we possess no faculty 
enabling us to gain an adequate insight into its hidden 
profundities. And neither are we able to understand 
how it comes that developmental increments of what 
is perceived as structure, creatively inwrought into the 
living substance, are found to embody progressive 
modes of world revelation, and progressive means of 
actuation in relation to it. We can only inferentially 
judge of what has been and what is being creatively 
accomplished by means of what is consciously revealed. 
And in order to become certain that our judgments 
really correspond to what actually exists, we have to 
submit them to rigorous scientific verification. 

Each sense reveals the world in its own specific man- 
ner. The world of touch, of hearing, of smell, of vision, 
are each all but complete in their own particular sphere. 
Yet they signalize within their special sensorial medium 
the presence and distinguishing characteristics of one 
and the same universe; affording thereby concurrent 
guidance to one and the same organic being in his inter- 
action with the outside world. Each sense has at first 
been structurally and functionally inwrought into the 
living substance independent of the rest, and has been 
elaborated as a separate sensori-motor system, struc- 
turally connected, however, with the general system of 
fused executive motor apparatuses. Eventually the 
different senses have also become more or less inti- 
mately connected with one another. Their combined 
conscious import with regard to cognitive world-revela- 






Sentiency and Purposive Movements 379 

tion, and to motor abilities, are embodied as memorized 
experience and potential vital functions in definite 
synthetic structures, which * have been shown by 
Flechsig to occupy in human beings two thirds of the 
substance of their cerebral hemispheres. 

Kant, who was conceptually aware of the nature- 
constructing efficiencies at work within the human 
being, declared that nature is made by the understand- 
ing. " Der Verstand macht allererst Natur." To ex- 
press the fact correctly he should have said that nature 
becomes consciously revealed in living beings by means 
and in measure, as structural and functional elabora- 
tion have been wrought within their living substance 
through interaction with the influences emanating from 
what in terms of consciousness is called "nature" ; but 
which in verity is a symbolically revealed and other- 
wise unknown complex of interdependent, extra -con- 
scious, power-endowed existents, to which our own 
being wholly belongs. 

It would be, and is, indeed, actually greatly mis- 
leading to believe, that in case we could get to know 
the intimate, self-existing nature of what is percep- 
tually revealed, we would gain a far more profound 
and enlightening insight into that which constitutes 
reality, an insight which would be of superior interest 
to us, than that at present gained by means of our 
symbolical modes of consciousness. It is true thai 
our consciousness, being utterly forceless and transient 
in all its modes, has nowise the power to penetrate 
understanding^ the nature of that which imparts 
efficiency and permanency to the existents that com- 
pose the real, extra-eonseious world. The intimate 
constitution of the something of which it is compose! 

remains unrevealed to consciousness, and so also its 



3 8 ° Biological Solutions 

sundry modes of efficiency that manifest themselves 
as mechanical impact, cohesion, elasticity, chemical 
affinity, gravity, and radiant energies. These con- 
sciously manifest phenomena emanate from modes of 
actuation unintelligible as such, and consciously assimil- 
able by us only in analogy to feelings aroused by our 
own extra-conscious activities, which remain as such 
likewise unintelligible. 

Moreover, our own extra-conscious efficiencies, when 
brought to bear on outside nature, have no power 
whatever to impart to it new modes of efficiency. They 
can only afford to its potentially preexisting efficien- 
cies new occasions to manifest themselves in new rela- 
tions. This merely vicarious aid of ours, limited to 
the giving of advantageous opportunities for the 
potential efficiencies of nature to become actual in 
new ways, applies also to the potential efficiencies 
inherent in our own organic being, which likewise may 
be rendered active by giving them favorable chances 
to exercise themselves. A striking illustration of this 
developmentally and educationally momentous fact 
are the many opportunities for actuation of the poten- 
tial efficiencies inherent in plants, which Luther Bur- 
bank's intelligent and sagacious aid gives them in 
this or that direction, and which lead to astonishing 
creative results, demonstrating the unlimited poten- 
tialities that may become actual in universal nature 
and especially in the sphere of already highly elabor- 
ated organic life. 

But if in our own being its modes of consciousness 
are themselves unconsciously developed in the hidden 
recesses of creative nature, and are able only vicari- 
ously to aid organic elaboration without having direct 
efficient power over it, and if our modes of conscious 



Sentiency and Purposive Movements 381 

awareness only symbolically reveal the presence and 
characteristics of the existents composing extra-con- 
scious nature, it is on the other hand true that this 
extra-conscious nature undergoes in its symbolical 
embodiment within the wondrously significant com- 
plexity of what is perceived as organic structure an 
exalting transfiguration, which by dint of the ingrained 
powers of the living organism assumes a sentient 
and intellectual worth not found in the other insen- 
tient and unconscious existents of outside nature. 
Life on earth is altogether and most intimately depen- 
dent upon the radiant energies emanated, or being 
actuated in the intervening medium, by processes at 
work in the sun. Nevertheless, contemplating it all 
from the standpoint of qualitative worth, how can the 
huge masses of inorganic stuff composing suns and 
planets, together with the illimitable expanse of the 
insentient, power-laden medium of radiant energy ; 
how can these crude bulks and potencies compare in 
achieved existential worth with the tiny but ex- 
quisitely organized creatures, whose structural and 
functional elaboration culminates in the all-containing, 
all-revealing consciousness of man, who has become 
capable of scientifically recognizing the true ways and 
the progressive drift of creative nature, empowered 
therewith inventively and constructively to utilize its 
atetua] and potential efficiencies in the service of his indi- 
vidual and social well-being and development; empow- 
ered also artistically to forecast ideal aims eventually 
to be attained. 

Surely there is no valid reason why we should 
humble ourselves in the presence of the inchoate 
immensities of the universe, as if we were really the 

mere "dust" into which in time disorganization will 



382 Biological Solutions 

individually reduce us. So long as we are the living 
bearers of the uplifted torch of perennial life, the blind 
impassive cosmic stuff scattered throughout the star- 
peopled universe has, within the quickened substance 
which constitutes our being, become itself by means 
of endless vital toil a center of sublimated and glori- 
fied potencies, irradiating within the sphere of its all- 
revealing consciousness the harmonized efficiencies of 
the world's creative stress and strife, against whose 
dread outbursts and other multifarious dangers it 
seeks rationally to protect itself, aiming in its 
humanizing endeavor to eliminate the brutal san- 
guinary warfare, that, impelled by ruthless propensi- 
ties, has hitherto irrationally but inevitably sustained 
the teeming life inhabiting the more or less uncultured 
wildernesses of this our dwelling-place. 



VIII. TELEOLOGY IN NATURE 

It is a most familiar experience, that with a special 
end in view we perform a definite series of actions in 
order to realize our designed purpose. Nothing easier 
than the performance of such purposive or teleological 
actions. But when we try to scientifically explain the 
familiar experience we find ourselves involved in a huge 
tangle of perplexities, which many centuries of saga- 
cious and patient endeavor have not yet succeeded in 
fully unraveling. 

We are aware of consciously determining to attain a 
certain preconceived end, and to design the series of 
means that will lead to its attainment. We are empow- 
ered to do so by what appears to be a mental faculty 
we call "intelligence" or "reason." Then, corre- 
sponding with the series of intelligently designed 
means, we execute by force of what we call our "will " 
a series of bodily actions that are intended to lead to 
the realization of the end we have in mind. How in 
most instances this realization happens to be actually 
effected as something detached from our own being 
remains profoundly enigmatic. But as regards the 
entire conscious teleological process, it takes place 
within ourselves and through ourselves Intelligence, 
as a conscious faculty, seems to be throughout the con- 
ceiving, designing, and guiding principle. The end to 
be reached is intelligently forecast; the means to attain 
it are intelligently designed ; and keeping the end intel- 
ligently in mind the whole teleological performance, 
from beginning to end. is intelligent lv guided. What. 



384 Biological Solutions 

we are here aware of as "intelligence," the only intelli- 
gence we directly experience, the only intelligence we 
have actually any knowledge of, is certainly something 
consciously manifest within our own being, something 
of a conscious nature forming part of our own conscious 
content. 

When, however, on the other hand, ends are uncon- 
sciously attained by a series of means, it must be 
something not possessing the same nature as the con- 
scious intelligence we have experience of, which in 
such unconscious cases is the teleological agent at work. 
For instance, it is evidently something of an entirely 
different nature from our intelligence that realizes 
within us by an intricate series of means the end of 
digestion, or of any other vital function ; and that with- 
out conscious forecast, and without any consciously 
designed means, directs teleologically the whole life of 
an insect or a plant to perform a definite most compli- 
cated series of activities that subserve the attainment 
of the predetermined final end of propagation. 

Of what nature, then, is the unconscious teleological 
agent here at work ? It is clearly a mere subterfuge of 
ignorance and perplexity to assume that in cases of 
unconscious teleology the same agency we know only 
as conscious is here likewise operative, but in an uncon- 
scious state; that it is intelligence of an unconscious 
kind which is here the teleological agent. Whole phi- 
losophies have, nevertheless, been founded on this 
spurious analogy. To a number of eminent thinkers 
the analogical inference or ontological postulation of 
an unconscious intelligence as the world-constituting 
principle has served to them as the most rational solu- 
tion of the supreme riddle of being and becoming. 
But a bottomless chasm yawns in reality between such 



Teleology in Nature 3$ 5 

teleological designs as are intelligently conceived and 
such unconscious teleological activities as we find other- 
wise operative in nature. To overb ridge this chasm 
between conscious intelligence teleologically at work 
in human beings; for example, in the conception and 
construction of a watch, and the unconscious teleolog- 
ical agency operative, for example, in the production 
of an organism ; in order to overbridge this bottomless 
chasm, thinkers have assumed an intelligence of the 
same conscious nature as our own, only of a vastly 
higher degree. A supreme conscious intelligence is, in 
fact, declared to be the agent that forecasts all ends to 
be attained in nature, and designs all means cooperat- 
ing in attaining them. 

If it is, indeed, a supreme intelligence analogous to 
our own that conceives all ends and designs all means 
which conspire to bring them about, where, then, does 
the "will" inhere that actuates the execution of the 
intelligent designs ? Where the executive organs actu- 
ated by the will? And where the world of reality 
wherein these intelligently designed ends are actually 
attained as perceptible existents? These are some of 
the perplexities that confront intellectualist philoso- 
phers in their attempt to explain teleology in nature. 

Starting experientially from actual human experi- 
ence, we find that intelligence can conceive and design 
the appropriate means to construct a watch or any 
other mechanical contrivance, but can nowise of itself 
produce a real watch or any real machine. To accom- 
plish this task, volitionally actuated executive organs 
have to be set to work upon externally sense-given 
material, and the resulting machine consists then of a 

perceptible object subsisting outside our own being 

wholly detached from it. and visible and tangible t<> all 



386 Biological Solutions 

outsiders. In analogically conjecturing a supreme 
intelligence as the conceiver and designer of what is 
teleologically accomplished in nature, we are certainly 
not justified, contrary to the nature of the only intelli- 
gence we have actual experience of, to conceive such 
supreme intelligence,. moreover, endowed with an exec- 
utive and world-creating will. To do so, nevertheless, 
is clearly to transcend all legitimate bounds of sound 
reasoning. 

Starting, on the other hand, with an ontologically 
posited supreme intelligence, the task is then to show 
how such a pure intelligence manages to put forth 
the requisite creative volition competent to produce 
the perceptible objects which constitute visible and 
tangible nature, and with it the objects manifesting 
natural teleology. It is safe to assert that no panlogic 
dialectics has ever, or can ever, succeed in identifying 
a mere concept with the real things conceived as com- 
prehended under it; to identify, for instance, my con- 
cept of a frog, teleologically or otherwise, that as such 
forms exclusively part of my own imperceptible con- 
scious content; to identify it with the teleologically 
constituted real frog perceptible to any number of 
percipient beings. Thought and Being, despite all the 
dialectic ingenuity of transcendentalists, can never 
identically coincide, except in the symbolically all- 
inclusive imagination of the individual thinker. And 
even then his imagination must have been previously 
informed by actual sense-given experience. He must 
have actually seen a real frog, or at least heard one 
described, in order to imagine anything like it. In 
fact, in all the wide world there exists no more tren- 
chant disparity than obtains between thought and 
being, between something merely thought of and its 



Teleology in Nature 3 8 7 

actual existence in nature ; between — if lofty concep- 
tions are preferred — goodness, truth, and beauty as 
conceptually imagined in an individual conscious con- 
tent, and goodness, truth, and beauty as actually real- 
ized in the perceptible world accessible to all. 

Kant, from whose speculations Neo-intellectualism 
took its rise, soon arrived at the conclusion, that, 
even if from our own ability intelligently to conceive 
ends and to design means, we were justified analogi- 
cally to infer that it is likewise an intelligent being 
that conceives the ends and designs the means to 
attain what appears to us as products of natural 
teleology ; that even then we would not be justified in 
inferring that this intelligent being possesses the crea- 
tive power required to realize in perceptible nature his 
ideal or intelligent plans. In his "Critique of Judg- 
ment" Kant consistently declares, that, in order to 
account for natural teleology the assumption of a su- 
preme intelligent artificer is not philosophically justi- 
fied, and much less the assumption of a creative 
intelligence. He finds that from actual experience we 
cannot legitimately infer that everything which happens 
in nature is really predesigned. He insists that natural 
teleology is, in fact, unmistakably manifest only in 
living organisms. And after scrutinizing all ways of 
looking at the problem of natural teleology, he rested 
satisfied with the conception, that our faculty of appre- 
hension is so eonstituted as to be compelled to regard 
the order and combination of natural occurrences 
manifest in living organisms as ideologically con- 
trived. In his "Critique of Purr Reason" he had a1 

length shown that by means of the physico-theological 

argument, the argument from design, the existence of 

a supreme, all-constituting being cannot be proved. 



3 88 Biological Solutions 

And no sort of Bridgewater treatises have had power 
to upset Kant's conclusion. Yet the contemplation of 
the cosmos as an ordered whole, with its perpetual 
drift towards development, and its evident teleological 
success in the creative formation of organic beings 
adapted to their medium; all this progressive form- 
ative becoming reveals a teleological bent in whatever 
underlies the activity which realizes the creative 
results. 

Intellectualism, in order to overcome the essential 
difference obtaining between mere intelligent conception 
and actual creation, simply identifies, without the least 
warrant, conceptual intelligence with actuating will, 
actuating will with executing means, and mere execution 
with creative potency, until the climax is reached in 
Panlogism, in which an hypostasized, implicitly all-com- 
prising eternal idea becomes explicitly manifest by means 
of self -evolving concepts. Pure intelligence, however, 
has had, and still has, rivals in the philosophical expla- 
nation of natural phenomena and their inherent teleo- 
logical bent. Although from Anaxagoras to our present 
Neo-Hegelians the supremacy and teleological effi- 
ciency of "intelligence" or "reason" has been strenu- 
ously maintained; animists, on the other hand, from 
Aristotle to the present day, have assumed an uncon- 
scious principle or soul at work in the formative and 
vitalizing process manifest in organic beings. And 
from Augustine to Kant, Fichte and Schopenhauer 
voluntarians have conceived "Will," conscious or un- 
conscious, to be the creative and teleological agent in 
nature. Moreover, from the Milesians to Haeckel 
Hylozoism, or the inherent animation of matter itself, 
is made to account for apparent teleology. And in 
opposition to all modes of teleological interpretation, 



Teleology in Nature 389 

indeed entirely excluding their possibility, the con- 
ception of an endless enchainment of mechanically 
equivalent causation holds still sway among most 
scientific investigators. 

In order to make room for a truly valid interpre- 
tation of teleology, and to gain a somewhat more 
profound insight into the agencies underlying it, an 
insight which involves what no mechanical interpre- 
tation can ever succeed in explaining, namely the 
qualitative distinction and worth actually obtaining 
among perceptible existents; in order to reach this 
more valid insight it has above all to be shown that 
what we have experience of as intelligence possesses 
as such no modicum of constitutive or creative power, 
but is merely a mode of our own human forceless 
awareness of that which is creatively constituted. To 
illustrate: I find myself in need of fire in order to light 
my candle. My acquired and memorized experience 
has taught me that when I strike a match it will ignite. 
This experience guides my voluntary bodily actions to 
seize what I perceive to be a match, to strike it, and 
to light my candle with it. I have intelligently fore- 
cast the end I desired to attain, and have intelligently 
designed the means to attain it. But it is quite evi- 
dent that the intelligent forecast and the intelligent 
designing of the means to attain it have neither 
created the bodily organs required to execute my intel- 
ligent aim nor the match indispensable to realize it. 
And surely it is not my intelligence that has in the 
least degree endowed the chemically prepared piece 
<»f wood with the power to ignite <>n friction, and to 
light the candle perceptually revealed to me as a 
foreign existent not forming part of my own being. 
To argue as intellectualists are wont to do, that every- 



39° Biological Solutions 

thing here perceptually experienced is a mere illusion 
of sense, and that what in reality occurs is taking 
place exclusively in a realm of intelligible existence, 
is all too plainly contrary to actual experience, which 
clearly teaches that the only intelligence we have 
knowledge of has as such no power whatever to create 
or to bring into existence the least perceptible object, 
or to endow it with any degree of efficiency. Sensa- 
tionalists, on their side, will here interpose, that it is 
not intelligence that gives rise to the things perceived, 
but that they are altogether composed of groups of 
sensations. For, so they argue, the executive organs 
we perceive consist evidently of a complex of visual 
and tactual sensations, so also the match, the fire, 
the candle, indeed everything we become conscious of. 
But the forceless evanescence of mere sensations, as 
actually experienced, is so glaringly evident that it is 
hardly conceivable how so many eminent thinkers have 
been allured to attribute endurance and constitutive 
power to them. To account for it, the epistemological 
difficulties in the way of legitimately transcending the 
solipsistic nature of individual consciousness have to 
to be admitted as excuse for positing so eminently 
fleeting and forceless phenomena as force-endowed, 
enduring entities. And, despite Berkeley and Hume, 
force-endowed must percepts and their constituent sen- 
sations be conceived to be, in order to constitute any- 
thing of enduring consistency. 

When the conscious aim is to build a house, and 
the designer has intelligently conceived the plan, it is 
surely an undertaking of an entirely different order 
to really build the house, to erect it part by part by 
working with volitionally guided executive organs upon 
raw-material perceptible at all times, and conse- 



Teleology in Nature 39 l 

quently independent of the designer's and builder's 
casual perceptual awareness of it; and, furthermore, 
to trust the experientially ascertained solidity and 
other properties of this extra-conscious material as 
efficient to actually realize the intelligently conceived 
plan. Finally the finished house is found to subsist 
as an enduring structure, which detached from the 
exclusive consciousness of the designer and builder, 
often outlasts them for ever so long, and remains per- 
ceptible to all onlookers. These are plain and un- 
deniable facts, evident to every one. If it were not 
for the insidious philosophical trap of pure Solipsism 
imprisoning thinkers within the magic circle of their 
own exclusive consciousness one would gladly refrain 
from insisting upon such obvious truths. 

It would be well, then, to recognize once for all, 
that nothing forming part of the conscious content, 
nothing of a conscious nature, either of conceptual or 
of perceptual consistency, possesses the least consti- 
tutive or creative potency. Consciousness only sym- 
bolically reflects in transient modes of phenomenal 
awareness what in reality exists, and what actually 
occurs in the realm of extra-conscious being and 
creative efficiency. 

nuine teleology in the manifest products of nature 
is found unmistakably operative in the existent s we 
are perceptually aware of as living organisms. These 
are developed from a reproductive germ into an adult 
being of minutely predetermined structure. The pro- 
duction of a specifically constituted adult being is here 
clearly the definite end predetermined to be attained 
through the multifold stages of development the genu 

is destined to undergo as means to reach the final reali- 
gn. In reproductive development we have then 



39 2 Biological Solutions 

a genuine prototype of teleology in nature, a distant 
end as predetermined aim is reached by a series of in- 
tervening means. The final end eventually attained 
involves, moreover, a relation of parts to the whole 
they compose which is strictly teleological. For all 
differentiated parts and all sundry organs of the living 
being are integrant constituents of an indiscerptible 
whole, and perform concordantly their diverse functions 
in subservience to the wants of the unitary individual. 
The teleological nature of living organisms is further- 
more evidenced by their developed constitution and 
conformation found to be through and through specifi- 
cally adapted to carry on life in a definite preexisting 
medium into which they find themselves born. And 
completing the teleological cycle of the individual life 
of organisms, the manifold and consecutive exercise of 
their vital functions in interaction with their medium 
during their whole lifetime subserves essentially the final 
end of propagation of their race. All these teleological 
occurrences are actually taking place in extra-con- 
scious nature, and although they become symboli- 
cally revealed to individual consciousness by definite 
modes of awareness, these conscious modes of casual 
awareness are obviously not themselves the agencies 
which impose a teleological significance upon natural 
occurrences that would otherwise be only links in an 
unteleological concatenation of an endless series of 
causes and effects, nowise destined to concur in realitv 
to the attainment of definite ends, through which they 
conjointly receive their true significance. 

Of course, the kind of consciousness, capable of com- 
prehensively grasping in one and the same moment of 
awareness the consecutive series of means that concur 
to realize a definite end, is itself the outcome of teleo- 



Teleology in Nature 393 

logical organization. If the organic matrix of our con- 
sciousness did not harbor in latency the memorized 
and systematized experience of the series of means that 
brings about a definite end, and if this latently harbored 
experience did not become comprehensively conscious 
in our moment of actual awareness, we could not have 
any individual knowledge of teleology in nature, nor 
any power to conceive ends and design means to attain 
them. For lack of the conscious awareness of such 
latently memorized experience of a comprehensive 
kind animals cannot acquire conscious knowledge of 
any teleological complex of occurrences. And though 
their own organism with all its functions and their 
own life-history are teleologically constituted, they 
never become aware of it. This unconscious meaning 
and teleological drift of their vital functions in inter- 
action with a specially given medium discloses how 
infinitely more fundamentally, essentially, and pro- 
foundly grounded extra-conscious nature really is 
than any kind of conscious awareness. Conscious 
awareness is, in fact, a mere consummate outcome of 
highly developed vital organization wrought by the 
creative potencies, through which all perceptible things 
and all modes of sentiency originate and are developed. 
The present writer in his treatise, "The Vitality and 
Organization of Protoplasm," founded on many years 
of investigation of primitive forms of life, has 
attempted scientifically to interpret the observably 
given phenomena, and therewith also to account for 
their ideological constitution, and the teleologicallv 
adapted functions of the individual life of organisms. 

In another section a summary of the most essential 
results of this investigation is given. Here their appli 
cation to the problem <'f teleology is called tor. From 



394 Biological Solutions 

the very start vitality involves teleology. For vitality 
essentially results from interaction of what is per- 
ceived as a compound chemical substance with the 
medium by which it is surrounded. Contact with the 
active influences of this medium tends to disintegrate 
the unstable composite substance. Now whenever 
such a substance, each time it becomes partially dis- 
integrated, gains the power and finds the means to 
fully reintegrate itself through incorporation of com- 
plemental material afforded by the medium, it has 
thereby acquired the property of vitality. Vitality 
essentially consists in functional reintegration follow- 
ing functional disintegration in reiterated sequence. 
Vitality is nowise a separate principle superadded to 
the chemical substance, and imparting life, animation, 
or besoulment to it. All this is the direct result of 
the interaction of the organic substance with its envi- 
ronment. It is through this vitalizing process that it 
becomes a ''living substance." And in this functional 
relation of the living substance to its medium; in the 
dependence upon the disintegrating influences of the 
same, and upon its supply of complemental or rein- 
tegrative material, the foundation of organic teleology 
is laid. Through a complex series of means vitality 
as the proximate end is attained. On the one side 
a unitary composite substance has gained thereby the 
capacity of undergoing a significant movement of dis- 
integration and reintegration . And on the other side 
a medium with which it enters into a threefold relation 
keeps the vital movement going. For, first, the living 
substance suffers functional disintegration through the 
dynamical influences of the medium; second, from the 
same medium it is supplied with nutritive or rein- 
tegrative complemental material ; and, third, it receives 



Teleology in Nature 395 

from it an allotment of atmospheric oxygen required 
to burn up the effete products of disintegration, enab- 
ling them thus to be eliminated from the vital cycle 
of occurrences. This complex process, which consti- 
tutes enduring vital activity, involves all the teleo- 
logical characteristics of the living organism in all 
stages of development. 

Manifold consecutive means have to concur in order 
to convert as their final end a lifeless substance into a 
living substance. This vitalizing process involves at 
the very start constitutional adaptation of the living 
substance to the conditions of the medium upon whose 
interaction its vitality is dependent. This interaction, 
which is of a threefold kind, determines the integrant 
organic interrelation of the functioning parts of the 
unitary living substance or organism. The part of 
the living substance which carries on the play of dis- 
integration and reintegration becomes eventually de- 
veloped into the ectodermic organs that embody the 
life of action and reaction with the outside world. 
Another part of the same unitary living substance 
develops concordantly into the entodermic organs 
which have essentially to supply the ectodermic organs 
with appropriately prepared complemental nutritive 
material. And a third part develops, in keeping with 
the ectodermic and entodermic development, into 
depurative organs fit by means of a supply of atmos- 
pheric oxygen to accomplish the elimination of effete 
products and unassimilable material. This threefold 
interaction of the substance composing organisms with 
its encompassing medium gives thus rise, through one 1 
and the same process, to its vitalizing movement, to its 
constitutional adaptation to the environment in which 
life is carried on, and to the organic interdependence i >f 



39 6 Biological Solutions 

all its parts. Further organic development consists 
in the gradual structural elaboration and specification 
of the same threefold interaction, in which the surface 
play of disintegration and reintegration takes the lead, 
involving gradual ectodermic development, and draw- 
ing with it the concomitant development of the nutri- 
tive and depurative organs. All these vital and 
organic relations are obviously of teleological signi- 
ficance. 

It remains to point out the teleological relation of a 
reproductive germ to the adult organism into which 
it develops. How is this most striking example of 
"final causation" to be accounted for? The teleologi- 
cal reproduction of an adult organism from a given 
germ has to be regarded as an extreme case of rein- 
tegration from a fragment detached from a unitary 
organism. Small fragments artificially severed from 
organisms of a low type demonstrably reintegrate 
themselves to complete adult conformation, often of 
an eminently complex and specific kind. A germ may 
be legitimately regarded as such a fragment normally 
detached from the adult organism it has to reproduce. 
It clearly possesses, like the artificial fragments, the 
power fully to reintegrate itself to adult completion 
through assimilation of complemental material. The 
final end to be attained through the highly complex 
series of reintegrative stages is strictly predetermined. 

These statements contain in general terms the scien- 
tific interpretation of organic teleology my biological 
researches have led me to adopt. They apply, of 
course, only to the perceptible nature of the organism 
and its observable development. There remain unex- 
plained in the background not only the activities that 
give rise to phylogenetic development, and the position 



Teleology in Nature 397 

of the living being in creative development at large, but 
also the significance of its sentiency, of its conscious 
awareness, and of the rational and ethical worth of its 
life. 

To inquire somewhat more closely into the given con- 
ditions which underlie the teleological nature of organ- 
isms, we have to refer to the specific integrant relation 
which the elements that enter into a chemical combina- 
tion bear to the integrated compound. By force of 
specific affinitive attraction these elements form inte- 
grant constituents, and not merely aggregated accre- 
tions of the chemical compound they concur to bring 
into existence. The newly produced chemical sub- 
stance is found to be endowed with new specific modes 
of action and reaction in relation to other existents; 
and therewith qualitative distinctions, otherwise unac- 
countable, become introduced into the mere quantita- 
tive concatenation of causes and effects. With each 
newly formed chemical compound qualitative relations 
of the perceptible objects of nature and of their inter- 
action with the influences of the cosmic medium are 
complexly multiplied. The specific relation of certain 
" elements" to certain other " elements," comprehended 
under the name of "affinitive attraction," and their 
definite mode of combination, give rise to more and 
more numerous and more and more complex chemical 
units. This natural occurrence may rightly be re- 
garded as a kind of incipient teleology, because diverse 
means have here to concur to bring about a specific 
end-result potentially predetermined. lien-, however, 

-liter the domain of productive creation, which 

belongs to an entirely different order from that of mere 

reproductive formation. 

evolution in nature does not consist in 



398 Biological Solutions 

manifest unfolding of particulars implicitly performed 
in some protogenic substance. It proves, on the con- 
trary, to consist in an eminently toilsome elaboration 
of products newly formed. And it is brought about 
by means of interaction between differently constituted 
and differently endowed extra -conscious modes of exist- 
ence, whose characteristics become partially and sym- 
bolically revealed to consciousness as corresponding 
modes of sense-aroused perceptual awareness. An in- 
creasing number of specifically endowed products come 
thus into existence, which possess manifold modes of 
more or less powerful potential integrative affinities to 
other products, and also concomitantly more or less 
powerful modes of disintegrative efficiency to other 
different sets of products. There ensues a turbulent 
competition between integrative and disintegrative 
potencies, and the diverse specifically constituted per- 
ceptible existents resulting therefrom testify to the 
victory of integrative elaboration and formation. Such 
integrative results and relations may rightly be looked 
upon as of teleological import. 

The real protogeneous substance, whence all percep- 
tible differentiation proceeds, seems more and more 
positively to be recognized in what is called the inter- 
stellar ether, an inferred substratum which appears to 
be itself homogeneous, and is yet the bearer of all modes 
of radiant energy, and the matrix whence all hetero- 
geneity in nature issues into perceptible existence. 
How these to our logical comprehension wholly contra- 
dictory properties or attributes of qualitative homo- 
geneity and qualitative heterogeneity can be inherent 
in one and the same entity; how a homogeneous sub- 
stance can possibly potentially contain all heterogeneity 
which becomes manifest in progressive development; 



Teleology in Nature 399 

such a state of things transcends at present our under- 
standing. It is the Eleatic paradox in modern form, 
the Parmenidean problem of the One and the Many 
over again. It seems, however, to be a fact inferred 
from spectrum analysis, that what is consciously re- 
vealed as chemical integration starts from some kind 
of differentiation within a homogeneous substratum. 
And in organic substances it becomes evident how a 
very small number of distinct "elements" are capable 
of combining, or of being integrated, in numberless 
specifically differentiated combinations, which respec- 
tively manifest widely disparate qualities. 

It is evident that the drift of what is perceptually 
revealed as chemical integration, and which involves 
the constitution and progressive development of an 
increasing number of qualitatively diversely endowed 
perceptible existents, is of teleological import, although 
endless potential possibilities of more or less stable 
arrangements and rearrangements are keeping up the 
restless stress towards new and newer formations. Still 
the dice with which the play of creative commotion is 
carried on are loaded in multifold winning ways, and 
fall in what we are aware of as the course of time into 
more and more complex and significant cosmic order 
and organic achievement. 



IX. BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF 
RATIONAL AND ETHICAL CONDUCT 

To philosophical contemplation it seems almost 
self-evident that rational and ethical conduct are 
unthinkable without some degree of individual self- 
determination. For if the individual whenever he 
acts is from any cause whatever forced to act exactly 
as he is seen to act, he would then certainly be out and 
out an irresponsible automaton, without the least 
volitional power over what would be then wrongly 
called his "voluntary" muscles, and without the least' 
directing power over the content of his conscious 
awareness. 

In order, therefore, to give a scientific account of 
rational and ethical conduct as a natural outcome of 
our vital activity, it is indispensable to prove that we 
have in all reality self-determined volitional power over 
our actions ; power intentionally to control the activity 
of our executive organs, in order to determine and 
direct the course an intended action shall take in its 
real execution. Only biological considerations can fur- 
nish this indispensable proof hitherto vainly attempted. 

It cannot be denied that to current mechanical 
science, which operates with nothing but matter and 
imparted motion, all living beings have to be con- 
sidered irresponsible automata whose movements, 
though seemingly volitionally intended, are in fact 
one and all mere mechanically necessitated modes of 
motion. Therewith is straightway denied all efficacy 
of "volition" over our actions, also over our modes 

400 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 01 

of awareness, and over the conscious apprehension of 
all that is found to occur in life. All modes of 
awareness, with all modes of feeling and thought, are 
in this view a mere ineffective, irridescent byplay to 
what of necessity mechanically occurs. Neither Des- 
cartes in the seventeenth, nor Huxley in the nine- 
teenth century, nor any other consistently thinking 
biologist has seen his way to escape this inevitable 
conclusion of mechanical science, the conclusion that 
all movements and therefore all action of living 
beings are rigorously necessitated. 

Psychical science, in its turn, assuming as it gener- 
ally does, that causative sequence, as a concatenation 
of definite effects following necessarily upon definite 
causes, also rigorously obtains among psychical phe- 
nomena; in assuming this it is clear that such psychi- 
cal science excludes likewise all volitional control we 
seem ourselves in a natural way to exercise over our 
actions. For if what happens in any following 
moment of time is strictly determined by what has 
occurred in the preceding moment, there is no room 
left then for the intrusion of any volitional self-deter- 
mination, or for any kind of deviation from such a 
necessitated course of psychical causation. In case 
this conception really expressed the true state of 
things, then consistently Schopenhauer's statement of 
it would have to be accepted as valid. He says: 
"All that happens is firmly linked together in the 
causal nexus, and occurs therefore with rigorous neces- 
sity. What is to happen in the future is obviously 
altogether positively, certainly, and exactly deter- 
mined, and can no more be changed than what has 
occurred in the past." Henry Sidgwick expresses in 
his "Methods of Ethics" thr same conviction even 



4° 2 Biological Solutions 

more sweepingly, for he declares that there obtains: 
''Completeness of the causal dependence of any voli- 
tion upon the state of things at the preceding instant, 
whether called character and circumstances, or brain 
and environing forces." Surely ethics under such con- 
ditions could not possibly be thought of. 

The notion of causative necessity still governs our 
psychical as well as our physical science, and the 
consistent outcome of it is undoubtedly out and out 
Determinism. Hence we have as a consequence of 
this belief in causative necessity either Materialism, 
which attributes everything that occurs in nature to 
necessitated physical causation, or pure Idealism, which 
attributes it to necessitated psychical causatiom Or 
recognizing the insufficiency of either of these one- 
sided monistic conceptions, so-called psychophysical 
Parallelism is at present adopted as a hypothetical 
makeshift or quietus. 

In a former section it was shown how physical or 
mechanical necessity is naturally overcome in the 
causative concatenation of occurrences. Nature by 
means of progressive development brings into manifest 
existence new force-endowed products, which intro- 
duce into the causative nexus new modes of action 
and reaction not mechanically necessitated. And, 
surely, manifesting preeminently such new modes of 
action and reaction, and constituting such newly 
elaborated force-endowed products of progressive de- 
velopment, are living beings. When they are com- 
pared to any non-living existent they are found to 
be self-acting in specific ways. Their movements are 
actuated from within, while the motions of non-living 
existents are all mechanically imparted from without. 
The modes of reaction of living beings, inclusive of all 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4°3 

modes of sentiency and conscious awareness, .are evi- 
dently likewise a new production or achievement of 
creation wrought through increments of vital organi- 
zation, and representing progressive modes of intrinsic 
reaction entirely absent in inorganic, non-vital nature. 
Consider what vast and complex intrinsic world of 
diverse physical and psychical abilities is in fact em- 
bodied in a highly organized living being. Neverthe- 
less our present physical science seeks to reduce all 
these intricate microcosmic abilities to mere modes of 
motion; our psychical science, on the contrary, to 
mere modes of consciousness. 

Now it is obvious that if we had really no volitional 
self-determined influence whatever, either over those 
inherent conditions of our own nature that in fact de- 
termine our actions from within, or over the external 
circumstances which induce or elicit these actions from 
without; also no control whatever over the perceptual 
awareness of the externally determining influences, and 
if we had, moreover, no effective use of the memorized 
recognition of the nature of their effects for good or ill 
on our being; if in all this we were really volitionallv 
utterly passive and impotent, it would certainly be a 
pure delusion of self -consciousness to believe that we 
have, nevertheless, volitional, and therewith rational and 
ethical power to influence the occurrence and direction 
of our doings. And it would be a sheer waste of time 
to write ethical treatises, and to advance subtile and 
specious arguments in order to prove that despite abso- 
lute Determinism we are. notwithstanding, guided in 
our actions by rational insight, and are ethically respon • 

able for them. If altogether psychically as well as 

physically determined 1>v necessitated causal links, we 

are inevasibly pure automata, as Spinoza and Leibnitz 



4°4 Biological Solutions 

actually declared us to be, " Une espece cT automate 
spirituel." If this were really so, then to speak of 
rational and ethical conduct would be simply absurd. 

Kant, likewise fully convinced that everything which 
occurs in nature from moment to moment, whether 
psychical or physical, is causa tively necessitated, as- 
sumed, in order to account for the actual fact of free 
moral self-determination, an ''intelligible Ego" as con- 
stituting the veritable essence of our being, and as 
having its existence in a supernatural, noumenal sphere. 
To this noumenal Ego he ascribed the power of free 
causative determination, rendering it capable of coercing 
the phenomenally necessitated "mechanism of nature" 
into the achievement of moral purposes volitionally 
aimed at in obedience to moral commands imperatively 
emanating from the realm of intelligible existence. 

Efforts to reconcile ethical self-determination with 
whatever sort of causative necessity have ever proved a 
hopeless task, though persistently attempted ever since 
man's thoughts were directed to this puzzling antinomy. 
The problem has evidently been wrongly conceived. 
It can be solved only by showing that causative 
necessity as formulated by theological necessitarians, 
philosophical determinists, and mechanical science, 
does not apply to man, who is organically equipped 
with self-determined abilities. That such is really the 
case, and upon what conditions these self-determined 
abilities depend, shall be made evident in the further 
course of this disquisition. 

Kant's fanciful transposition of our organically devel- 
oped power volitionally to determine ethical and other 
modes of action, transposition of it from our perceptible 
self where it really inheres, to a purely assumed intelli- 
gible Ego, which latter Kant declared to be our real 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4°5 

transphenomenal being subsisting beyond space and 
time appearances, and therefore exempt from space 
and time limitations ; this speculative notion of a super- 
natural moral Self inspired Fichte — rather consistently 
from the idealistic standpoint - — to conceive this time- 
less and spaceless volitionally empowered Ego, Will, or 
Reason, to be by force of its free causative efficiency 
and self -positing actus pur us the all-creating principle 
of the universe. And he declared it to be rationally 
striving to realize by means of its free activity a perfect 
moral order of existence. 

From the assumption of a primordial, transphenom- 
enal, nature-creating Will, held to constitute the real 
Self of the multitude of transient forms of life phenom- 
enally appearing in time and space, Schopenhauer, on 
the other hand, more rationally than Kant and Fichte, 
adjudged the primordial Will thus posited to possess an 
irrational and immoral character. For it could have 
been only an unaccountable craze, or worse, that in- 
duced it to break through its eternal nirvanic repose, 
in order to exteriorize and disperse its all-sufficient, 
plenary nature into countless, blindly striving, ever- 
suffering and perishing individuated units. 

It must be confessed that the consistent outcome of 
hypostasizing an all-efficient creative Will, or the con- 
nt outcome of any creed which presupposes a state 
of original perfection, from which nature, and especially 
man, has strayed or fallen; that the rational outcome 
of such a seriously supposed state of things has ever 
more or less pronounced Pessimism, as again 
taught in our time by Schopenhauer. Such Pessi- 
mism involves as the essential tenet of its ethics ascetic 
withdrawal from the allurements of this transitory 
world, and striving through their renouncement, as- 



4°6 Biological Solutions 

sisted by supernatural aid, to be delivered from all 
worldly or so-called "sinful" desires, and from all con- 
sequent strife, suffering, and precariousness of this 
illusive and deceptive existence, hoping thereby to 
regain the lost state of pristine bliss in the realm of 
eternal beatitude. 

It is indeed no wonder that in the presence of so 
many untoward threatening dangers and disasters, and 
witnessing the ruthless sway of the strong over the 
weak ; that cowering under the overwhelming might of 
nature's dread catastrophes, expecting at any mo- 
ment to have to encounter the ferocious onslaught of 
prowling beasts, and, worse still, to become the victim 
of fiendish tortures inflicted by hostile men; it is no 
wonder that in the presence of this dire content of pre- 
carious life, when at last in the dawn of arising ethical 
conscience the recognition of the innate kinship of man 
to man began to stay the pitiless warfare between hu- 
man brethren in their savage struggle for existence 
and their satisfaction of animal cravings ; it was natural 
then that commiseration for the hard lot of needy man 
sprang up in compassionate hearts. And it was natu- 
ral that it caused their bearers to turn away in horror 
and contrition from a world where carnage and lust ran 
riot ; to turn away from it and take refuge in the hope 
and faith that in a celestial home, penitently gained, 
lovingkindness will reign supreme, or at least all strife 
be forever quenched in blissful quietude. The world 
over, wherever social conscience became intensely 
awakened, it has culminated in the inculcation of ascetic 
ethics, urged thereto in open view of the preponderance 
of evil over good, when measured by a standard of some 
fancied ideal perfection, firmly believed in as somewhere 
existing and passionately longed for. 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4°7 

But abstracting from ideal perfection fancied to 
preexist somewhere, it is evident that here on earth 
the kind of conduct that is designated as moral or ethi- 
cal, and recognized as such in its aims and by its doings, 
is something quite different from, nay, quite opposite 
to, the conduct urged by ascetic ethics. It is something 
emanating solely from human beings as exercised by 
them in social communion with one another during 
their lifetime, and applying wholly to their existence 
here on earth. When the conduct of a member of a 
community is said to be morally right or good it is 
essentially meant thereby that he has acted morally 
towards his neighbors and towards the community at 
large. And when his actions are said to be wrong or 
bad they are condemned essentially on account of their 
injurious effects upon neighbors and the community. 
It is always the welfare of the community and the well- 
being of its members that are implicated in what is 
looked upon as right or wrong conduct in social life. 
Moral conduct towards fellow-beings is rightly judged 
by social actions, not by verbal professions and ritual 
observances. 

Of course, moral commendation and condemnation 
of human actions do not in the least explain how it hap- 
pens that a certain standard of morality has become 
established in a community. And it remains still more 
obscure how it comes about that starting, let us say, 
from a state of savagery or barbarism, in which state 
right and wrong have mostly no moral meaning what- 
ever, and especially not with regard to conduct towards 
members of other communities, it remains obscure how 
it has come about that, despite the innate savage and 
barbarous propensities of the uncivilized human animal, 
there has arisen with the progress of social culture in 



4°8 Biological Solutions 

certain individuals more mindful than others a sense 
of right and wrong behavior towards "neighbors," with 
the conviction that human beings, such at least as 
belong to the same community, ought to treat one 
another as "brethren," recognizing that they all par- 
take of the same human nature, are all striving for 
satisfaction of the same needs, and are, furthermore, 
longing to share in whatever social development has 
contributed towards human progress and happiness. 

Human beings, it need hardly be said, are nowise as 
formerly believed, and as still insisted upon by tran- 
scendentalists, a peculiar order of creatures originally 
endowed with a special faculty called "reason," which 
intuitively reveals to them what is right and what is 
wrong, and impels them to conduct themselves morally. 
And still less are they, as many yet profess, a race of 
beings at first without sin and knowing only happiness, 
that have become morally depraved through commit- 
ment of the unpardonable sin of disobedience to the 
explicit command of a supreme being on the part of the 
original progenitors; a race of creatures remaining in 
consequence ever since a fallen race without power of 
its own to morally redeem itself. It is, in fact, ration- 
ally consistent, when a state of original perfection is 
assumed, to infer that only a guilty act somewhere 
committed could have caused a falling from a state of 
complete satisfaction precipitantly down into a world 
where attack and defense, need, suffering, and death 
inevasibly prevail. Taking, then, for granted that 
irredeemable depravity is the lot of the human race, 
such a lot would render social existence utterly impossi- 
ble, and involve a war of all against all without a social 
contract being entered into as Hobbes and others main- 
tained. Or, as more generally accepted, this antisocial 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4°9 

state would exist without the enunciation of a number 
of moral commandments emanating from the same 
supreme being w T ho punished us so severely for the dis- 
obedience of our original progenitors; commandments 
enjoined under the threat of still severer punishment 
for disobeying them. It is certain under all aspects 
that without obedience to moral injunctions no mode 
of cultured social existence would be possible. But it 
is obvious also that mere obedience to promulgated 
commandments has in itself no genuine moral value. 
The moral value of an act has consequently to be sought 
in far more valid and recondite conditions. 

Howsoever beneficent the religious fiction of the 
origin and promulgation of moral injunctions has hith- 
erto proved to ethically undeveloped and unprincipled 
man, anthropological study, and indeed the positively 
ascertained fact of gradual step by step development 
of all living forms, with all their physical and psychical 
faculties ; these positive results of biological research 
have rendered certain that men, being constitutionally 
and primarily mere social animals, have only by slow 
degrees advanced, and are still only gradually advanc- 
ing, some more, some less, towards rational and ethical 
humanization. From a purely instinctive beginning 
of altruistic propensities, originally arising as an organic 
acquisition from the sexual and parental superindividual 
relation, these have in keeping with the development 
of social culture expanded overmoreand more numer- 
ous associations of human beings, at first closely inter- 
related by bonds of consanguinity, spreading then over 
more distantly related groups brought together by 

common interests. 

It will not be denied by Scientifically trained thinkers 
that a more correct and profound insight into the ways 



4io Biological Solutions 

of creation, principally gained through biological re- 
search, has of late completely reversed the direction of 
human hope and faith with regard to fulfillment of relig- 
ious longings and ethical aspirations. For it has be- 
come certain that the ascent from lower to higher forms 
of life has been achieved through incessant vital toil 
and strife, every advance being gained by victory over 
surrounding perils, and by merciless attacks and de- 
fenses of every occupied position. What may be called 
the creative sanction, the inscrutable formative power 
which affirms and fixes through developmental incre- 
ments of organic constitution each progressive step 
howsoever ruthlessly won, this formative sanction of 
the creative stress has accrued wholly irrespective of 
ethical means, nay, by what we must now regard as 
highly unethical processes. It structurally ratified the 
vital toil in whatever direction it might be exerted all 
along the endless stretch of eons of time, until at last, 
amid numberless deviations, it developed in social man, 
its highest achievement here on earth, rational insight 
and ethical sentiments, which with increasing urgency 
influenced his conduct towards his human kindred and 
associates in progressively widening circles of intercom- 
munication. 

The social instinct of animals and the social conscious- 
ness of man are, like all vitally attained acquisitions, 
organized faculties embodied in what is perceptu- 
ally revealed as specifically constituted vital struc- 
ture. These structurally organized faculties have been 
creatively elaborated before conscious volitional con- 
trol and choice came to impart to them discriminative 
direction in relation to the growing complexity of nature 
as sense-revealed, and as freighted with cumulatively 
increasing knowledge bearing with it the memorized 




Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 11 

cognition of the multifold diverse effects of the outside 
world upon human welfare. Eventually in man voli- 
tional control over his executive organs enabled him to 
regulate his conduct in relation to the widely compre- 
hensive complex of his cognitively memorized experi- 
ence as consciously presented in his moment of actual 
awareness. We human beings become thus empowered 
to choose among the many offered possibilities the best 
suited ways and means which according to memorized 
experience will lead to the realization of our special 
volitional intentions. In case these intentions prove 
to be in their execution conducive to further our indi- 
vidual and social welfare, then such beneficent discrim- 
inative actuation on our part constitutes our more or 
less rational and ethical behavior in life. The choice 
of means and the direction of volitional execution 
occur within ourselves among the manifold presenta- 
tions of our memorized experience. The execution is 
realized outside ourselves among the extra-conscious 
exi stents of the world at large. 

An action to be rational has to bear the character 
of volitional intention and cognitive discrimina- 
tion. Reflex, instinctive and automatic actions, due 
to structurally fixed modes of actuation with regard to 
definite needs prearranged to be satisfied by specifi- 
cally given objects; or actuation due to firmly estab- 
lished modes of reaction in response to definite modes 
of incitement; howsoever conducive they may be to 
the welfare of the acting individual and to that of its 
such strictly predetermined actions cannot prop- 
erly be regarded as rational. Rational conduct LS 
altogether dependent on the organic detachment of 
means of volitional actuation from genetically preced 
ing modes of automatic actuation, and concomitantly 



4i2 Biological Solutions 

dependent also on organically memorized and concep- 
tually systematized experience generically and indi- 
vidually gathered in the course of time, and brought 
to a cognitive focus for guidance of conduct in our 
moment of actual awareness. Reason is nowise a uni- 
versal, reality-constituting principle as maintained by 
transcendental Idealism. Without an accumulated 
fund of organically memorized experience applying to 
our life of outside relations, and gained in interaction 
with the same, reason could no more exist in men than 
in lower animals. The strict interdependence of rea- 
son and educationally acquired speech is in itself suffi- 
cient proof of it. Reasoning is an activity exercised 
by the living being upon material of his gathered 
memorized experience consciously presented in actual 
awareness. It consists simply in unraveling memor- 
ized, generalized, and systematized experience, deduc- 
ing from it analytical propositions or judgments. 

This conscious material of rational thought and con- 
duct is, however, not, as Kant believed, merely sense- 
given raw material. The sense-affecting influences of 
the outside world arouse within us into actual aware- 
ness a generically and individually preestablished and 
perceptually and conceptually systematized conscious 
representation of an extra-conscious world, whence the 
sense-stimulating influences emanate. This inwardly 
established microcosmic representation of the real 
extra-conscious world constitutes the immediate con- 
scious environment in which and by means of which 
conscious life is carried on. Rational determination 
of a course we intend to pursue in real life and the 
possibility of its actual performance are strictly con- 
ditioned, first upon a fund of memorized experience 
consciously offered for choice of ways and means in 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4*3 

actual awareness, and second upon the volitional con- 
trol of our executive organs guided in their action by 
the memorized consciousness of the chosen path. 

Ethical considerations of a hedonic or pleasure- 
giving character in relation to our fellow-men enter 
into rational conduct when deference to their recipro- 
cal human rights and furtherance of their human 
well-being become recognized and felt demands of 
sympathy and justice, and when these demands are 
affectively and volitionally complied with. Each indi- 
vidual is by inheritance a representative of the wealth 
and worth of human existence, an inheritance toil- 
somely elaborated within his organic being. And until 
he disgraces his human nature he has to be treated in ac- 
cordance with the super-individual worth he embodies. 

Determinists maintain that the human individual 
is innately endowed with a definitely established com- 
plex of "volitional" dispositions, which constitute his 
given character, and which are respectively and specifi- 
cally adapted to conditions of a definitely given envi- 
ronment. Under incitement by certain presented or 
imagined objects or circumstances of craving or desire 
at the time being a definite action is said to be of 
necessity elicited. Or, in case more than one object 
or circumstance are urging together the activity of 
the same kind of volitional propensity, or if different. 
kinds of such, then the most powerful conjunction of 
present desire and of apprehended object of satisfac- 
tion is held to elicit with necessity the present action. 
Such combination of strongest desire with incitement 
by the most suitable object of satisfaction is called the 
powerful "motive" to action, which among all 

competitors is in consequence certain to succeed in 

rmining the action. 



4H Biological Solutions 

Such a determinist conception of " volitional" activ- 
ity suits pretty well a stage of animal existence before 
volitional activity has become organically detached 
from mere automatic modes of actuation, and before 
an accumulated fund of memorized experience is 
placed for choice and guidance of conduct at the dis- 
posal of the acting individual in each moment of his 
present awareness. The decisive characteristics of 
genuine voluntary efficiency are the power to inhibit 
actions which otherwise would automatically occur, 
the power also to consciously assist actions that are 
taking their preestablished habitual course, and above 
all the power to initiate and direct movements so as 
to attain definite ends consciously forecast, but not 
necessitated by structural arrangements, not being 
mere necessitated motor actions and reactions in 
answer to definite modes of organic cravings stimu- 
lated by presentation of their definite objects of satis- 
faction. Genuine volitional conduct is vastly more 
complex and far more profoundly rooted in organized 
acquisitions than is generally supposed by determinist 
ways of interpretation. To become aware of this we 
need only consider the superficial and transient nature 
of actual sensorial stimulation, which alone directly 
reveals to us the presence and perceptible character- 
istics of the existents of the outside world as they 
affect our specific organic sensibilities. Genuine voli- 
tional conduct applies to a world transcending in its 
completeness and signification altogether the limits of 
what simultaneously appears in time and space as 
actually given ; a world constructed of multifold 
scattered inner and outer experience that has become 
memorized, systematized, and unified, and is being as 
such comprehended by means of intricately involuted 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 l S 

signs in our present moment of awareness. All the 
wealth and progressive results achieved within ourself 
and in the world at large in the course of endless time 
and all that fills space here on earth and immeasurably 
beyond, though ever so far out of reach and out of 
present sight, all effects on our well-being caused by 
external influences and arousing our emotional sensi- 
bilities; all this widely comprehensive, memory-con- 
stituted world forms the ideally transfigured and yet 
reality-representing domain within whose all-compris- 
ing enlightment genuine volition shapes comprehensive 
schemes of action, and seeks to realize them in the 
more or less plastic material of the real extra-con- 
scious world, to which the individual bearer and 
wielder of the stupendous all-comprising, all-revealing 
conscious content himself wholly belongs, as the most 
essential factor of this terrestrial phase of creative 
vital achievement. 

To add to the scope of our volitional control of our 
conduct as pursued in the light of systematized and 
synthetized experience, it lies in our power by force of 
concentrating our attention upon definite percepts 
coming within our ken, and upon definite thoughts 
spontaneously arising or artificially made to arise in 
our conscious content; it lies in our power by this 
means, and especially under sufficient training, to 
determine to an essential extent the sequence into 
consciousness of a definite train of interrelated ideas 
or thoughts fit to serve as guidance in the pursuit of 
a definite volitional aim among a maze of other offered 
possibilities. 

The freedom of volitional conduct here scientifically 
vindicated is the freedom by means of voluntary 
movements, to which those of attention likewise 



4 l6 Biological Solutions 

belong, to pursue among many remembered possi- 
bilities a certain course towards the attainment of 
a mentally predetermined aim. Of course, the in- 
tended aim to be reached, in order to be rational and 
attainable, must lie within the compass of human 
capacity in general and of individual capacity in par- 
ticular, and it must correspond to conditions actually 
obtaining in extra-conscious nature. Fanciful aims, 
not realizable in extra-conscious nature, are mere air- 
castles. If these are seriously believed to be never- 
theless realizable, they may lead and have often led 
to atrociously irrational and unethical indulgence of 
volitional activities in life-perverting pursuits. More 
or less noxious are all manner of superstitious or fanci- 
ful beliefs. Only actual experience, practically and 
scientifically verified, can teach us what volitional aims 
are realizable in the creative sphere of real extra- 
conscious existence. 

The possible abilities inherent in human nature are 
a definitely given and positively determined complex 
of endowments possessed in degrees and combinations 
varying constitutionally in each individual, and at 
different periods of his life and of his gathered experi- 
ence, but fixed as a whole at the moment of each sepa- 
rate action. And the constitutionally determined 
sphere of individually attainable aims at the time being 
is strictly circumscribed by the nature and extent, not 
of what exists in the outside environment, but by the 
nature and extent of the experience that has become 
organically memorized within the living being. There 
are numberless gradations between the promptings to 
action and the sphere of desires connected with the 
animal nature of man on the one hand, contrasted, on 
the other hand, with the promptings to action and the 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 J 7 

sphere of desires of man when he has become human- 
ized through social and ethical culture. It is, however, 
of the utmost importance to recognize that the process 
of real humanization of the social animal called man is 
essentially one of most gradual organic elaboration, of 
just the same kind of creative elaboration that has 
originally differentiated him from the lower animals. 
It is, therefore, a fatal mistake to trust to the still prev- 
alent presumption that has led, and is still leading, to 
grievous results, the presumption, namely, that a sav- 
age — to take an extreme example — can through edu- 
cation during his lifetime be transformed, not only into 
a well-trained higher kind of animal, but into a socially 
and ethically cultured being. Such transformation is, 
however, successively accomplished even in deaf and 
blind children that have inherited the organized dis- 
])< )Sitions of a race advanced in the process of humaniza- 
tion. It is tragic that not even the most benevolent 
treatment of races, that have become stagnantly 
adapted to a lower state of social existence, can avert 
their final elimination, when forced into competition 
in the struggle for existence with higher developed 
races. The inherited inferior organization cannot pos- 
sibly become developmentally adapted to the highly 
c< >mplex social environment of cultured life, established 
during long ages of definite previous elaboration. 
When we consider what comparatively small progress 
has been made by the highest developed races in con- 
verting the great majority of their own social members 
into conducting themselves of their own free will out 
•• sincere conviction in a truly rational and ethical 
manner, such as is accepted to be right and incumbent 
upon them in the stage of culture attained in the com- 
munity to which they belong; when we consider this 



4 l8 Biological Solutions 

tardy progress in real humanization among the most 
advanced races, it is obvious how futile must be the 
attempt to organically and culturally develop a race 
low in the scale of human progress into a high one in 
only a few generations. Of the truth of this biological 
statement there is to be found abundant actual demon- 
stration, whose lessons should be well heeded by states- 
men and educators that have to deal with such infe- 
rior races. It is generally presupposed that any being 
appearing in human shape is right away potentially 
endowed with all the faculties of highly cultured man, 
which faculties need only to be educationally actualized 
in him. This chiefly religious prejudice is being every- 
where in practice sadly upset. And most difficult of 
all to be organically and functionally developed are the 
moral faculties. 

In dealing with their own race statesmen and edu- 
cators should ever bear in mind that the character of 
the social environment of which the established rational 
and ethical convictions are the most essential compo- 
nents ; that this environment of cultured achievements 
and ethical convictions constitutes the preeminently 
efficient factor in the humanizing process of the mem- 
bers of the community or nation. Hence the extreme 
difficulty of the task incumbent on a true democracy, 
the task to contrive so far as feasible that equal justice 
in treatment and opportunities be done to every citizen, 
and to strive by all possible means to raise them all to 
a high level of rational and ethical conduct, and of cul- 
tured life. The full success of the democratic aim is, 
however, thwarted to a considerable extent by unavoid- 
able inequalities of different kinds, of which inequalities 
of natural endowments and of ethical dispositions and 
conduct are the most formidable. Access to the ad- 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 X 9 

vantages yielded by a cultured environment, and, above 
all, a high ethical standard upheld in social life in gen- 
eral, are the most promising means to secure the success 
of democratic institutions. Deprive a child simply 
of the advantages gained by the possession of a cultured 
language, and its reasoning faculties will necessarily 
remain deficient. It will grow up into a rationally and 
ethically deficient being and citizen. A linguistically 
uneducated deaf and dumb person, to take an extreme 
instance, can hardly be called a humanized being. The 
learning of linguistic signs and what they in reality 
signify is that which chiefly fits individuals to par- 
ticipate in the blessings of cultured life. But ethically 
deficient will remain an individual deprived of an envi- 
ronment of ethical convictions and examples that will 
arouse his potential ethical disposition to practical 
activity. 

.Man becomes a humanized being in measure as he 
organically and educationally participates in the 
achievements of social culture. Children socially iso- 
lated and growing up untaught remain in a state of 
semi-imbecility. An idiot, on account of his deficient 
organization, cannot rightly be considered a humanized 
being, obviously for the same reason, or rather for the 
same cause, that a chimpanzee is not and cannot 
1 >rt ■< >mc a humanized being. Humanization strictly de- 
pends on degrees of attained structural brain-organiza- 
tion and on appropriate social surroundings. A deaf 
and blind child that remains linguistically untaught is 
still more completely debarred from participating in 
rational and ethical culture than a mere deaf child. 

In consequence it abides necessarily in a state- of almost. 
complete animality, despite its heritage of highly devel- 
oped organization embodying potential humanized 



4-2o Biological Solutions 

faculties. The awakening touch of the influences of 
the environment to which the social nature of the child 
has been genetically adapted is imperatively required 
to actualize its potential faculties. Nothing interven- 
ing from beyond this definite sphere of established 
inner and outer conditions can possibly substitute itself 
for them. Appropriate linguistic education through 
nothing but the sense of touch will accomplish this 
wonderful result of rational and ethical awakening 
that no other means can effect. 

To a correct understanding of the real conditions 
that conspire to constitute human nature it is essential 
to recognize that individual man owes his rational and 
ethical propensities, nay, his entire rational and ethi- 
cal constitution, to the humanizing influences of social 
culture. It has been attained through progressive 
organization of the faculties that underlie rational and 
ethical conduct. The principal pregnant conclusion 
to be drawn from the biological facts here brought for- 
ward is, that what we actually know as a human person, 
be he ever so highly developed in everything that en- 
nobles human nature ; that such a person is scientifically 
unthinkable as a self-rounded unit or self-sufficient 
individuated totality, whose existence when severed 
in thought and action from his social environment can 
possibly retain any kind of significance. This conclu- 
sion is scientifically fully justified, and cannot be sub- 
verted by any sort of egotistical pretensions. Human 
nature forms indissolubly an integrant though indi- 
viduated and most highly developed part of its vital 
and social environment. 

Hedonic ethics aiming at the present well-being of 
individual fellow-men, although it constitutes the proxi- 
mate expression of awakened ethical conscience, is by 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 421 

no means its sole ethical end, as has been strenuously 
maintained by hedonic moralists. Higher demands are 
imposed on our ethical conscience by the recognition 
that all the concentrated wealth and worth of conscious 
organic existence, laboriously gained by ages upon ages 
of creative travail; that this entire organized wealth 
and worth of body and mind is bequeathed as a most 
precious heritage to the individuals of the generation 
actually alive in this present span of time ; the genera- 
tion that is forming the sole link between the endless 
procession of past and of coming generations. The 
human individual finds himself thus destined to be the 
bearer, trustee, and transmitter of the highest achieve- 
ment wrought here on earth by whatever underlies 
creative activity. On recognition and appreciation of 
this trans-individual mission, and of the vastly super- 
individual character and import of his own personality, 
man ought by rights to feel bound by the commanding 
and solemn significance of such insight, upon conformity 
to whose guidance the future welfare and progress of 
humanity at large depend ; he ought to feel rationally 
and ethically compelled to acknowledge that demands 
of a higher order than those of mere hedonic satisfac- 
tion of present individual and social desires are there- 
with imperatively imposed upon his moral conscience. 
These demands clearly enjoin him not in any manner 
to degrade the high-wrought worth and dignity of his 
inherited humanized nature; to defend at all individual 
risks the generical rights and possessions of the socially 
and ethically cultured community and nation to which 
he belongs, and to which he owes all that constitutes 
him a humanized being; and he cannot rationally fail 
to recognize the duty conscientiously to strive to further 
the humanizing development of his race, and to trans- 



4 22 Biological Solutions 

mit his own humanized nature enhanced, if possible, 
but at least not deteriorated, to posterity. 

Upon ethically developed persons moral duties and 
responsibilities are not imposed as commandments 
emanating from some source external to themselves, 
obliging them to obey, as children are obliged to obey 
the commands of their parents, without questioning, 
reasoning, and ethical conviction, or obliging them to 
obey as ethically uncultured persons are made to obey 
legal and ethical injunctions for fear of social and 
religious punishment or hope of reward. Ethical in- 
junctions have their veritable origin in biologically 
ascertained facts and processes whose significance has 
become in the course of organic development to be 
rationally recognized. In this manner it has become, 
for instance, a recognized positive biological truth, that 
the pleasurable satisfaction of organic cravings and 
dispositions, such as hunger and sex ; the pleasant effect 
of warmth, of rest, and sleep, of companionship and 
divertisement ; that the enjoyment of the satisfaction 
of organic needs is no final end in itself, but subserves 
the higher purpose of individual and race preservation, 
and furthermore most essentially the still higher pur- 
pose of progressive organic elaboration, or, at least, of 
organic elaboration in whatever adaptive direction the 
organic being is placed with regard to a specifically 
given environment. Animals have become thus organ- 
ically adapted through and through to the special en- 
vironment within whose sphere they are found to carry 
on their existence. 

In watching the actions of animals it would appear 
that the almost exclusive aim of their doings is to satisfy 
the cravings of hunger and sex, and that their life of 
outside sensory and motor relations is altogether sub- 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 2 3 

servient to this end. Their essential pleasures and 
pains seem to be the direct outcome of their success or 
failure in satisfying these appetitive cravings. And 
their accidental pains, moreover, principally result 
from satisfying the hunger, or from inciting the jealousy 
of other animals. Under this seemingly justified as- 
pect of animal existence their organism with its vital 
activities seems to consist, on the one hand, of internal 
organs and functions in which are embodied the appe- 
titive cravings with their accompanying passions, 
whose satisfaction constitutes then the essential object 
of life. And, on the other hand, it seems to consist of 
organs that bring the animal in direct interaction with 
the outside world: sensory organs, muscular appa- 
ratuses, and neural structures. These would then ex- 
clusively subserve the intrinsic cravings and passions 
by supplying them with means of satisfaction. 

This rather plausible view of the subserviency of the 
organs of the life of outside relations in obviously min- 
istering to the life of intrinsic cravings and passions; 
organs apparently formed exclusively and in manifold 
cunning ways for procuring what is wanted to satisfy 
the appetites embodied in the internal organs ; this 
view, justified as it would seem by what is actually 
observed, is that explicitly adopted from an anatomical 
and physiological standpoint by the eminent biologist 
Bichat, and from a philosophical standpoint by the 
pessimistic philosopher Schopenhauer. They applied 
it with many sound arguments not only to what are 
more particularly called animals, but preeminently also 
to the special animal of the genus homo. It is clear 
that if the raisofl d'etre of the sentient and conscious 
life of animals, man included, really consisted merely 
in helping to procure pleasurable feelings experienced 



4*4 Biological Solutions 

in the satisfaction of appetitive cravings, and if the 
living organism existed really and principally for the 
sake of sensual enjoyment, life for rational and ethical 
beings would not be worth living, and ascetic ethics as 
actually inculcated by the religion of contemplative 
nations would afford the proper rational guidance for 
human conduct to follow. 

As Schopenhauer rightly teaches from what might 
biologically be called the entodermic or inside point of 
view, in contrast to the ectodermic or outside point of 
view, namely, that the awakening in exceptionally 
gifted individuals of rational insight into the ruthless 
ways and means of creative Will, as lust-propelled it is 
madly striving for sensual gratifications; that this 
awakened rational and ethical insight on the part of 
man's intellect, when abnormally developed it has suc- 
ceeded in emancipating itself from merely subserving, 
the demands of animal appetites, and has recognized 
the fundamental wickedness of the Will's creative ways ; 
that this enlightenment disclosing the essential vileness 
of life cannot fail to make man feel strangely out of 
harmony with normal animal nature as here on earth 
displayed. 

If this entodermic view expressed the real state of 
things, then, indeed, better by far to refuse being any 
longer entangled in such a bootless whirl of "sinful" 
greed and lust, and by renouncing its allurements, and 
withdrawing altogether from it, to abandon the entire 
loathsome turmoil to animal rapacity, for which alone 
it is thus fit. Or, perchance, to bring by such ascetic 
conduct to reason the distracted Will itself, so that re- 
penting its guilty doings and desires it may desist from 
its baneful rush into what proves to be but a scrimmage 
of suffering and perishing existences, and induce it to 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 2 5 

reenter, itself converted, into its pristine nirvanic 
repose. 

Such pessimistic view of life, expressed in various 
figurative ways, forms the essence of the still professed 
creeds of the most cultured nations of the present time ; 
creeds, however, practically ignored in the performances 
of real life. It cannot be too emphatically insisted 
upon that this life-denouncing creed is founded on a 
complete misconception of human nature. For man's 
highly developed nature having started from low begin- 
nings of purely animal existence represents at present 
the manifest embodiment of the most exalted achieve- 
ment wrought by the creative powers, that during toil- 
some eons have fashioned the multifarious constituents 
of this life-teeming globe out of what is scientifically 
revealed as simplest elementary stuff. 

The present writer considers it one of the most en- 
lightening results of his biological researches to have 
positively shown that from the very start of vital activ- 
ity, as distinctly observable in primitive forms of life, 
the ectodermic functions, which carry on the life of 
outside relations, instead of being essentially subservi- 
ent to the inner entodermic life, the very reverse is 
really the case. The essential function of the entodermic 
or inside life consists in the preparation of assimilable 
complemental material suited for reintegration of the 
functionally disintegrated organs of the ectodermic or 
outside life, through whose interaction with the envi- 
ronment progressive organic elaboration, and all edu- 
cational results are in fact attained. No thoughtful 
biologist, nay, no common-sense observer, can nowa- 
days fail to recognize that the potential seat of con- 
scious memory, the local habitation where is preserved 
in latency all we have learned through casual experi 



4 2 6 Biological Solutions 

ence, and through systematic teaching, and from whose 
sense-hidden potency emanates into present awareness 
the entire content of what we become actually con- 
scious of; that the real seat and source of emanation 
of the entire world of consciousness is to be found in 
what is perceptually revealed as the brain and its 
marvelously organized structure. 

Whatever density of traditional prejudices, and 
mazes of epistemological difficulties, may theoretically 
obscure and bewilder this plain common sense and bio- 
logical conclusion, it is abundantly justified by mani- 
fold actual experience, and by biologically ascertained 
facts. Intuitively our educational methods are in 
consequence founded upon intentionally directed modi- 
fications of the structures that underlie conscious mem- 
ory, and that potentially harbor it in unconscious 
latency. The practicing of a feat of memory until it 
has become secondarily automatic differs in no essential 
manner from the practicing of a feat of muscular skill 
until it has become secondarily automatic. In both 
instances it is an abiding modification of preexisting 
efficient vital structure that has been effected. With- 
out such actually elaborated modification of preexisting 
efficient structure neither the motor nor the conscious 
feat could have resulted as something newly developed, 
newly come into existence. The developmental accre- 
tion is a creation of something not previously existing ; 
but it is wrought upon a vital matrix previously crea- 
tively elaborated. A conscious feat emanating from 
no underlying perceptible structure is just as unthink- 
able to a scientist as a motor feat accomplished without 
underlying perceptible structure. An inevitable infer- 
ence from it is, that progress in conscious awareness 
can only be attained by developmental elaboration 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 2 7 

of what is perceptually revealed as brain -structure, 
just as progress in motor abilities can only be attained 
by developmental elaboration of the structures from 
whose functional activities they proceed, neural struc- 
tures being here likewise implicated. The living 
substance that constitutes brain-structure is a develop- 
mental outcome of the same sensori-motor living sub- 
stance that constitutes muscular structure. In neural 
substance the sensory character predominates, in mus- 
cular substance the motor character. In neural struc- 
ture the motor activity is of a "molecular" kind, in 
muscular structure it results in a molar outcome. The 
two differentiated structures remain, however, in func- 
tional continuity. 

In placing in a parallel a conscious state with a mo- 
tion a similar objection may be raised, as can rightly 
be raised to the placing in a parallel the "secretion of 
the thoughts from the brain" to the "secretion of bile 
from the liver." The placing in equivalent juxtaposi- 
tion conscious states and muscular movements has 
to be epistemologically justified. A perceived move- 
ment turns out to be itself but a conscious sign aroused 
in outside observers and signifying a functional activity 
of the extra-conscious existent here perceptually re- 
vealed as muscular or motor apparatus. And so is a 
conscious state directly arising in the subject who ex- 
periences it a functional outcome of the activity of the 
extra-conscious existent perceptually revealed as brain- 
structure. What appears here as motor to outsiders. 
appears as a conscious state to the functioning subject. 

Prom the important biological truth just elucidated 
it follows, that all progress in conscious awareness and 

all progress in muscular abilities, have from the very 
beginning of the vital activity of the sensori-motor 



4 28 Biological Solutions 

living substance been attained through structural elab- 
oration, and that, consequently, no conscious awareness 
of any kind, whether conative, affective, or cognitive, 
and no display of muscular abilities, can ever have 
existed in the past, or can ever exist in the future, de- 
tached from their manifest, specifically elaborated 
structure. 

The recognition of this real state of things, as biologi- 
cally disclosed, is, of course, of utmost importance in 
the conduct of life. Although subversive of cherished 
traditional beliefs, it opens an insight into our real 
nature, and points out the right course that leads to 
progressive humanization. 

What is perceived as brain -structure, a structure 
kept organically and functionally intact by a vortex of 
constant vital activity, and revealed to visual con- 
sciousness by means of nothing but " ether vibrations" 
arousing it in specific ways; this symbolically light- 
revealed, extra-conscious, culminating constituent of 
our being is incontestably an achieved generical result 
of most gradual elaboration, wrought through vital 
interaction with the medium, to whose diverse modes of 
incitement its own functional reactions significantly 
respond in the form of conscious states. These con- 
scious states have obviously no other significance than 
to render the living being aware of his organically in- 
grained modes of interrelation with that which consti- 
tutes its real extra-conscious environment, so that they 
may serve him as guidance in his manifold interactions 
with the same. This organically developed brain- 
structure, which underlies as potential matrix the 
systematized dispositions of our established modes of 
conscious interrelation with the environment; this 
potential matrix of consciousness we individually in- 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4 2 9 

herit ready-made with the rest of our concomitantly 
developed organization. 

Post-natal experience gained in living interaction 
with the same environment to which the organism has 
been generically more or less adapted, such individual 
experience, so far as it merely repeats previously firmly 
established and organically embodied racial experi- 
ence, consists simply in the actualizing, through corre- 
sponding modes of external incitement, of what is 
already preexisting. The truth of this biological asser- 
tion is clearly evidenced in the purely instinctive activ- 
ities of animals that issue organically ready-made 
into living interaction with the special medium within 
which they have to carry on their life. All their pre- 
disposed vital activities that make up their life-history, 
and all the predisposed reactive responses of their 
sen sori -motor organism are simply set going or touched 
off by appropriate external incitements to which they 
have been organically adapted. This is clearly so with 
firmly established racial experience as organically fixed 
in fundamental modes of interrelation of the organism 
with its medium, as, for instance, in the breathing of 
the new-born infant on contact with air, or in its suck- 
ing on contact with the breast ; or as seen in gallinaceous 
binds and other animals on exit from their eggs or a1 
birth with regard to almost all their interactions with 
the medium, and still more completely and strikingly 
in insects whose organization has become so thoroughly 
prcin formed through racial development of what is 
going to happen to them and through them during 
their lifetime in contact with their appointed medium. 

that nothing more has to he [earned by them in actual 

intercommunication. 

Post-natal experience accruing to individuals not 



43° Biological Solutions 

organically ready-made at birth, and who are not 
merely exactly repeating definitely established racial 
experience, this new experience can only be latently 
memorized and potentially preserved or retained 
through definite modification of the structure of the 
preserving matrix, by which it is received, upon which 
it is impressed, and in which it becomes incorporated 
with more or less stable retention. Frequent repeti- 
tion as actually occurs in the course of life, and as is 
intentionally made use of in systematic training, fixes 
more firmly the accruing modifications of the receiving 
matrix, and imparts retentive stability to the new ex- 
perience. 

Presuppose as fully established the latently organized 
memory of all that can be experienced in a life-time, 
and particularly the memorized store of knowledge 
acquired by a highly educated scholar, and what 
more do the Fichtes, Schellings, and Hegels need, what 
more all conceptualist thinkers, what more all manner 
of idealists, than this accumulated fund of memorized 
experience, in order to fabricate, evolve, or spin out 
from such all-containing store their fanciful world con- 
structions; palming them off, then, upon themselves 
and their disciples as really objectively subsisting in 
some transcendent sphere as the eternal content of a 
universal potency, substance, will, reason, or intellect? 
Or what more is needed to find sufficient material to 
construct their airy world out of this or that kind of 
conscious states, assumed for the purpose to possess 
permanency of existence, unsupported by any percep- 
tible organic matrix? Here in these perceptual and 
conceptual world-constructions the all-important epis- 
temological problem is simply ignored, while its correct 
solution alone can account for the true significance and 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 43 l 

the realistic implications of what phenomenally and 
transiently appears in our conscious content. Without 
previous experience gradually acquired through direct 
interaction with the sense-affecting external existents, 
and wielded by means of educationally imparted lin- 
guistic signs, there could arise in our conscious content 
nothing of rational cognitive significance. Surely the" 
w r orld we know can nowise be conjured into existence" 
simply by force of " productive imagination " or " intel- 
lectual intuition" as idealistic philosophers contend. 
Nothing but sense-revealed and sense-aroused experi- 
ence, gathered in direct contact and interaction with 
the real world of extra-conscious existents, can furnish 
consciousness with cognitive material. Such material 
has, however, itself no substantial existence, and gains 
its significance only as referring to the world of extra- 
conscious subsistence from which it is representatively 
derived. 

Imagine that from the summit of a high mountain ' 
you are surveying a vast landscape stretched out be- ' 
fore you, and though on the whole it is something new 
to you, it consists of numberless well-known objects, ■ 
such as villages including many houses and living beings, 
forests with a multitude of different kinds of trees, and 
iiulds with all manner of growing crops. Now where 
lias this actually perceived landscape with all its mani- 
fold content its permanent existence? Your sight is 
directly affected by nothing but an intricate complex 
of "ether vibrations" which visually arouse in yon a 
corresponding complex of shaded and colored forms. 
This is all you directly see. Evidently these mere vis- 
ual forms do no1 constitute the real landscape. By 
closing your eyes it vanishes altogether out of exist- 
ence. Nor can the real landscape possibly be consti- 



43 2 Biological Solutions 

tuted by the complex of " ether vibrations" that alone 
affects you from outside. Where, then, can the land- 
scape you are at present actually aware of, with all its 
well-known constituent objects really exist? As form- 
ing part of your individual conscious content it obvi- 
ously exists nowhere but in your actualized potential 
memory, which reproduces representatively what you 
have previously experienced during your lifetime in 
direct living interaction with the extra-conscious exist- 
ents that through sensorial modes of incitement have 
revealed to you their actual presence and differentiating 
characteristics, together with their import for weal 
and woe to your own extra-conscious being, and to 
that of your fellow men. 

Without this previous experience which has gradu- 
ally accrued through direct interaction with the sense- 
affecting external influences, and which has become 
structurally fixed and systematized in your organic 
being; preserved there as potential memory, which on 
being actualized alone imparts significance to the 
shaded and colored forms of your vision ; without this 
potential background of memorized experience there 
could exist no such landscape as you actually perceive 
and cognize. And despite unimpaired vision you could 
no more evolve it from pure intellectual intuition than 
a blind person in presence of it. The landscape you 
actually perceive, and whose constituent objects you 
recognize in all their known bearings upon yourself 
and upon one another, consists, then, altogether of 
modes of your own potential memory at present func- 
tionally actualized. And it symbolically represents in 
fleeting modes of awareness a permanent world of inter- 
related extra-conscious existents, which constitute the 
environment to which you have been organically 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 4J3 

adapted, and in interaction with which your life-history 
unwinds itself. Clearly the shaded and colored forms 
which visually compose the landscape you actually see 
would signify nothing to you, unless from the gathered 
fund of your latent memorized experience, acquired by 
your manifold modes of interaction with the real extra- 
conscious existents visually represented, were not con- 
comitantly aroused so as to form part of your present 
conscious content, and to impart to the visual forms 
their true significance. Some of these forms signify 
real houses built to live in ; others real trees suited for 
manifold uses ; others certain plants cultivated for dif- 
ferent purposes; others again human beings socially 
related to us and to be ethically treated. And to us 
humanized beings social and ethical culture supplies 
here the most valuable significance to the perceived 
objects, which to our mere animal nature would mean 
only objects either suitable or unsuitable to satisfy our 
appetitive needs ; objects to be either sought or avoided 
solely on this account. 

The actual concurrence of that which is cognitively 
present in conscious awareness, the concurrence with 
its signified complement in real extra-conscious exist- 
ence, is wholly a matter of pree'stablished harmony 
creatively achieved through organized adaptation, in- 
clusive of memorized experience, generically ingrained 
in the organism through its living interaction with the 
sense-affecting influences of the environment. And it 
is the continued interaction with the same influences 
of the outside world that sustains and develops the 
inherited organization and all the functional activities 
of the individual. Without reference to a signalized 
world of extra-conscious existents the all-revealing 
conscious content would have no meaning whatever. 



434 Biological Solutions 

In the same way, without reference to our social life 
carried on amid fellow-beings like ourself, our ethical 
consciousness would lose its entire significance, would, 
in fact, be non-existent. I see a friend coming towards 
me. This conscious phenomenon consists directly of 
nothing but a moving visual form. It is relevant to 
ask : What real significance could this mere visual form 
have if it were not concurring with a real extra-con- 
scious being signalized thereby? And how could the 
" ether vibrations " that arouse in me this specific vision 
reveal the real presence and characteristics of my friend 
if not through preestablished harmony between the 
external stimulation and the corresponding organic 
reaction or response resulting in my definite perceptual 
vision ? And how could I be aware of my friend's outer 
and inner characteristics if not through memorized 
experience of my actual former intercourse with him? 
And how could my friend and I be really existing as 
organic beings understanding each other by means of 
mere acquired linguistic signs, if not organically and 
socially developed in interaction with the same physi- 
cal and psychical environment, and having both inher- 
ited a humanized constitution that has been creatively 
wrought to its present state of efficiency through pro- 
gressive increments of organic elaboration ? 

A dream consisting of nothing but mind-stuff may, 
indeed, mimic all the experience of waking life, and 
even combine it in fantastic ways of its own. But 
without previous vital interaction with the real exist- 
ents of the outside world, perceptible and tangible by 
all normal human beings, without the memorized ex- 
perience gained by such interaction, and principally 
without the organic matrix harboring it all, and issuing 
it more or less rationally systematized into actual 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 435 

awareness, no dream, and no other kind of conscious 
display could bear with it any kind of cognitive or affec- 
tive significance. The social and ethical consciousness 
that plays its part in dreams originates just as much in 
social and ethical experience gathered in actual life, 
and having become potentially memorized, than any 
other constituent of our conscious content. They all 
originate in no other way than in actual living experi- 
ence through interaction with the extra-conscious exist- 
ents signalized and signified by them. Our inherited 
potential dispositions, inclusive of rational and ethical 
propensities, organically ingrained in our vital consti- 
tution have, in order to become actualized, to be 
brought in direct living interaction with the corre- 
sponding stimulating influences. Without air no 
breathing and no hearing; without radiant energy no 
warmth and no vision ; without complexity of affective 
and cognitive influences, whose manifold effects upon 
the organism have been consciously memorized and 
linguistically designated, no rational conduct ; and with- 
out social and linguistic intercourse with fellow-beings 
no ethical conscience, no ethics of any sort. 

Our rational and ethical propensities are not trans- 
cenden tally derived as a foreign influx from some super- 
natural, noumenal, or intelligible source. They are 
entirely inbred in our humanized nature. Like all our 
vital possessions they are gradually developed organic 
acquisitions, potentially subsisting in what is percep- 
tually revealed as specific vital structure. Prom this 
vital matrix alone they become functionally opera! i ve- 
in real life when appropriately actualized. Let the 
structural matrix Undergo deterioration, and in keep- 
ing with it will rational and ethical consciousness dete- 
riorate. Let it altogether cease to function, and with it 



43 6 Biological Solutions 

rational and ethical consciousness and conduct have 
ceased to exist. This positive fact alone outweighs all 
arguments to the contrary put forward by reasoners 
whose own underlying brain-structure is sound and 
alive. 

An inscrutable creative stress, manifestly tending 
towards higher development, renders vital activity pro- 
gressively fruitful, and has as its highest result here on 
earth partly succeeded in achieving the rational and 
ethical humanization of animal nature. Hunger, carry- 
ing with it such tremendous practical consequences 
into life, is, rightly viewed, only a conscious sign of 
the need for functional reintegration on the part of the 
ectodermic organs. And so likewise is sleepiness, the 
most insistent appetitive craving, a mere conscious 
sign for the need of complete restoration to functional 
integrity on the part of the entire life of outside rela- 
tions as a unitary whole. This is effected, and felt to 
be effected in sleep during suspended functional activ- 
ity of the ectodermic organs. In significant contrast 
to it the functions of the entodermic life continue mean- 
while sleeplessly their own activity, in order to supply 
uninterruptedly the ectodermic organs with appropri- 
ate restitutive material. As regards the craving of the 
sexual appetite, it is also a complemental need instinc- 
tively ingrained in the respective sensori-motor comple- 
mental organisms, as perceptually manifest in the 
contrast of male and female organization. And just as 
the craving of hunger subserves essentially the preserv- 
ative integration of the individual, so does the craving 
of sex essentially subserve the preservative integrity 
of the race. 

But the mere preservation of what already exists; 
the preservation of the individual and of the race as 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 437 

at present constituted is very obviously not the prin- 
cipal work of vital activity. The progress in vital 
achievement from mere animal life to the life of cul- 
tured man, this progressive development is too con- 
spicuous and momentous a fact not to be recognized 
as that which is the most significant factor in vital 
organization and function. The entodermic organs 
and their functions in higher animals and in man are 
much the same. Viewed from the purely entodermic 
standpoint man is, indeed, a mere animal. The vast 
distance that separates him in a socially and culturally 
developed state from mere animals is embodied in the 
organs of the ectoderm. It is brain and brawn : brain 
with its all-revealing, all-realizing consciousness ; brawn 
with its execution of volitional behests and all-fash- 
ioning manual skill; it is these ectodermic organs and 
faculties that represent the paramount result of cre- 
ative elaboration. It is not stomach, liver, and spleen 
howsoever marvelously organized; not the breath 
emanating from the lungs once believed to be the very 
soul of life; not the blood and the heart propelling it, 
often looked upon as the essential structures in which 
life and its emotions are embodied. All these indis- 
pensable constituents of the vital organization of ani- 
mals are but exquisitely wrought apparatuses of the 
vitally operated chemical laboratory, whose organic- 
office is to prepare and to supply on the spot what i^ 
needed to carry on in full efficiency the life of outside 
relations. 

In vital interaction with the outside world we live 
and have our being. Nothing that constitutes our 
life and our being has any significance save in relation 
to our physical and social environment. There exists 
in reality no such irrelated monstrosity as a self- 



43 8 Biological Solutions 

rounded individual or all-sufficient entity of any sort; 
a living, thinking being imagined as persisting to exist 
when detached from its natural environment. The 
individual is nothing merely to himself, his nature is 
preeminently hyperindividual. He is through and 
through physically and psychically adapted to his actu- 
al environment, and has been out and out organically 
developed to his present state of efficiency through 
interaction with the same. The individual is a mere 
focus, in which is concentrated for the time being the 
vital achievement of numberless generations of ances- 
tors. It is a fatal mistake, not only scientifically, but 
also ethically and religiously to imagine the organically 
elaborated individual to be something of self-impor- 
tance, something self -consistent apart from his actual 
environment; a being detachable from it all, and yet 
retaining his essential faculties, and this even when his 
own embodying vital organization has ceased to exist. 
It is no mere illusion of sense, but truest reality, that 
it has taken eons of creative travail and vital toil to 
elaborate the wondrous sensori-motor organization of 
the living substance to its present state of physical 
and psychical perfection as manifest in man. This emi- 
nently laborious creative result has its existence in a 
ceaselessly maintained interaction with the cosmic envi- 
ronment ; being, in fact, a vital vortex ever newly pro- 
duced by a perpetual in and outflow of cosmic influences. 
It is a positively ascertained fact that the underlying 
vital structure of faculties not actually exercised infalli- 
bly degenerates. The organic structures and their 
functions having been developed in interaction with 
the influences of the environment to which they have 
become specifically adapted, and through which they 
receive their significance ; it is only through continued 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 439 

interaction with the same that they are efficiently 
maintained. The life of a saintly hermit who has 
wholly renounced the world was once deemed the acme 
or meritorious religious life and the highest fulfillment 
of the demands of ethical conscience. In verity such 
saintly life has, on the contrary, to be deemed a noxious 
perversity of the humanizing social life toilsomely 
developed in us by whatever beyond our own human 
power has creatively produced it. The mental life of 
such a saint, after he has turned away from the world 
and from social intercourse, continues to consist alto- 
gether in the use of the socially developed faculties he 
has inherited, and in the rumination of what he has 
learned through social intercourse by means of socially 
acquired and memorized linguistic signs. He owes, in 
fact, all he takes with him into his retreat of mental 
faculties solely to his social nature. If such a traitor 
to his entrusted human and social benefactions per- 
sists long enough in shunning everything that refers 
to social life and his own social nature, he will of neces- 
sity gradually degenerate into a benumbed imbecile, 
as has been abundantly proved. How many prison- 
ers, forcibly deprived of social intercourse, and the 
means of exercising their social faculties, lose their 
mind and end in a lunatic asylum? Surely this suffi- 
ciently indicates that the socially isolated individual 
removed from his natural medium suffers deterioration 
of his humanized, and with it of his "spiritual" facul- 
ties, which are his most precious possession. We 
receive as a gift of supreme value our creatively clabor- 
ated organization and its vital faculties, whose prede- 
termined functions point the righl way to pursue in 
order to fulfill their appointed mission, which through 
rational and ethical use of them leads to the human- 



44° Biological Solutions 

izing development of our being. Our humanized na- 
ture, containing the all-revealing consciousness and 
all inherited faculties of body and mind, this free gift 
of surpassing worth deteriorates into mere animality 
if not rationally and ethically sustained by our own 
vital exertions. 

The individual exercise of organically inherited fac- 
ulties or dispositions of whatever kind, physical or 
psychical, alone secures the continuance of their effi- 
cient functional activities, and alone conduces to their 
further development. Who, then, can foresee the event- 
ual outcomes of such progressive development ration- 
ally assisted in the direction of what has already been 
achieved, and with the knowledge of the means that 
have hitherto brought it about? The creative stress 
that amid cataclysmal upheavals has laboriously fash- 
ioned stage by stage the progressive formation of this 
terrestrial globe, eventually rendering it fit to evolve 
and sustain living beings, and at last fit to afford a suit- 
able home to man, and the means for his civilized 
existence; this creative stress that amid perilous sur- 
roundings has succeeded increment by increment to 
vitalize and organize the mobile stuff that composes the 
eminently sensitive and frail living substance, and has 
through ages upon ages of disintegrative and reintegra- 
tive interaction with its environment ultimately devel- 
oped it into the marvelously structured organism, 
with its multifold responsive modes of consciousness 
found in cultured man ; this same creative stress that 
has accomplished all these formative and sense- 
informed results, who can foretell what more it can 
achieve, what further heights of progressive develop- 
ment it may scale, assisted as it now is by man's intelli- 
gent insight and increasing scientific knowledge ? 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 44 1 

The world revealed in conscious awareness consisted 
in early stages of organic development only of what 
directly conduced to guide the animal in satisfying its 
appetitive needs and in avoiding threatening dangers. 
In man this conscious awareness has expanded and 
deepened into a vast cognitively enlightened micro- 
cosm, consisting of a world of harmonized, system- 
atized, and emotionally transfused inner and outer 
modes of consciousness ; consisting, in fact, of the whole 
world we sense and know. The inner modes of con- 
sciousness that took their rise from mere appetitive 
needs have in civilized man already become through 
social intercourse to a considerable extent rationalized 
and moralized into a just and sympathetic appreciation 
of the equal rights and concordant sentiments of hu- 
man associates, and into far-sighted regard for the wel- 
fare of the social community. Moreover, the germ of 
altruistic feelings implanted in the sexual relation has 
developed into a sense or conscience of dutiful respon- 
sibility for all that its satisfaction entails and imports 
in a state of social and ethical culture ; a conscience that 
finds its immediate expression in affectionate and faith- 
ful devotion to one's mated life-companion, and in the 
solicitous raising of one's children so that they may 
become upright and useful members of the social com- 
munity; altruistic sentiments these which expand so as 
benevolently to include the entire human race and its 
dumb dependents. 

The outer modes of awareness, on their side, thai 
took their rise in mere primitive tactual feelings have 
developed in civilized man into a widely comprehensive 
and grandly magnificent perceptual world, sense- 
aroused by delicately attuned touches emanating 
from the infinite, extra-eonseious. power-endowed 



44 2 Biological Solutions 

macrocosm, out of whose productive activities all things 
proceed, and of whose all-containing nature so much 
becomes symbolically revealed, as has been cognitively 
incorporated in man's organic being, he forming him- 
self an integrant part of the universal macrocosm. The 
constitution and potencies of this macrocosm, seem- 
ingly capricious, dread-awakening, and bewildering to 
primitive man, are becoming more and more adequately 
revealed and understood by means of scientific inves- 
tigation. And although we are powerless to creatively 
impart to what are consciously apprehended as the 
things and forces of nature any additional efficiencies 
not inherent in themselves, they become, nevertheless, 
plastic under our hands by force of our intelligently 
and inventively arranging for them new opportunities 
to display new modes of efficiency through new modes 
of interaction among one another, resulting in out- 
comes which we render subservient to promote further 
progress in humanizing culture. The medium in which 
cultured life is actually carried on consists principally 
of such outcomes of inventive contrivances. Imagine 
them all annihilated, and with it would be annihilated 
the rational and ethical nature of civilized man. For 
he has become civilized in measure as the memorized 
consequences of his interaction with the inventive 
contrivances have become ingrained in his organic 
constitution. Of these ingrained and organically memo- 
rized acquisitions human speech with its means of 
expression has proved by far the most important. It 
has become creatively ingrained and organically mem- 
orized in what is positively known as the organ of 
speech, occupying a definite position in the brain and 
being structurally connected with the organ of hearing, 
of sight, of touch, of articulation. All these structu- 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 443 

rally organized linguistic dispositions have been 
gradually superadded to the animal brain, and have 
evidently developed through constant linguistic exercise 
in social intercourse, and by means of the invention of 
various ways of linguistic expression, such as writing 
and printing. The faculty that distinguishes man 
preeminently from mere animals is his power of voli- 
tionally wielding the linguistic signs, which summon 
forth from latent memorized experience into actual 
awareness what they are meant to signify. A child 
deprived by organic inheritance of the organ of speech 
could not possibly grow up into a rationally human- 
ized being. How utterly fanciful, then, the notion 
that reason or intelligence as an entity existing prior 
to organic development is endowed with the power of 
linguistically expressing itself without the toilsomely 
elaborated organ of speech. This fanciful notion of 
an unembodied or disembodied intelligence or reason 
of the human kind linguistically expressing itself, or at 
all existing, is something unthinkable to a thoughtful 
anatomist and physiologist. Intelligence or reason as 
we know it is inseparably bound up with speech, and 
speech itself is a functional outcome of the organ of 
speech. 

In civilized man as now developed the sense-awak- 
ened perceptual world intimately interblended within 
his conscious content with all the culturally elaborated 
sentiments and aspirations of social life, constitutes a 
sentient and cognizant microcosm of supreme wealth 
and worth, compared to which the infinite starry heav- 
ens, dotted with huge insentiently seething masses are 
but raw-material in a more or less advanced state of 
elaboration. So sentiently exalted above insentient 
nature has human life come to be, for it potentially 



444 Biological Solutions 

harbors, and actually emits, the all-revealing, all-fash- 
ioning world of consciousness, and it finds itself en- 
trusted with the mission to cooperate in attaining the 
results of creative development. A world unrealized 
in conscious awareness, unapprehended, unseen, un- 
heard, unappreciated, what desolate turmoil would it 
represent as such? It attains rational and eventually 
ethical value only by becoming organically harmonized 
in the living substance and consciously revealed in 
human awareness. And social communion and culture 
to become truly conducive to human welfare and to 
further progressive development have to be ration- 
alized and moralized. Irrational conduct, which means 
in essence conduct averse to the developmental course 
of nature, leads infallibly to deterioration of body and 
mind. For conduct becomes rational only in measure 
as it concurs with the formative and progressive trend 
of creative development. Health of body and mind 
rests on this foundation. And so it stands with im- 
moral conduct, for it necessarily leads to the undoing 
of the achievements of social life as established in truly 
civilized communities, and as organically ingrained in 
its truly humanized members, inevitably drawing with 
it the relapse of social existence into barbarism and 
savagery. Although nature outside human conscious- 
ness cannot rightly be called rational and moral, no 
more than it can rightly be called alive and sentient, 
the living and sentient, rationally and morally con- 
scious humanized being represents here on earth the 
ultimate triumphant achievement of nature's ceaseless 
organizing activity. And this final result of the in- 
scrutable creative activity can be maintained at its 
present height of development, and led to further pro- 
gress, only by us rationally ascertaining through scien- 



Rational and Ethical Conduct 445 

tific means the genuine factors that enter into the 
work of progressive development, and thus informed to 
aid them with moral good will in their beneficent 
course. 

Finally, let us venture to express in a few terse sen- 
tences the philosophically matured attitude that the 
humanized individual is destined to assume towards 
the profundities and immensities of the sense-revealed 
universe. With exalted joy he will walk the earth, 
conscious of irradiating from out his own minimal self 
into the illimitable stretches of the outer world's im- 
penetrable gloom, and amid its blindly contending 
forces, to irradiate into it all the glorifying luster that 
transforms it into a becalmed realm of surpassing 
beauty and appraised worth ; conscious of casting into 
the shapeless darkness of its abysmal profundities the 
all-illuminating splendor of multicolored vision ; of fill- 
ing the silence of the mutely toiling spheres with a re- 
verberation of glad and sad strains of tuneful song; 
conscious of apprehending beyond the subtile, sense- 
awakening touches that reach him from the bleak 
desolation of the vasty deep, the life-warm near pres- 
ence of kindred beings, sympathetically sharing with 
him the emotive stirrings of their unseen inner life; 
conscious of feeling empowered to alleviate their pains 
and troubles, and of so shaping the common social 
environment that justice be done to all; conscious of 
being, amid the perils and griefs that beset his indi- 
vidual self, the bearer and transmitter of all that has 
proved life-worthy and enduring in ages upon ages of 
victory over the devastations of death and decay; con- 
scious of being capable watchfully to decipher with 
scientific zeal the true significance <>f the hieroglyphic 
Signs that disclose the momentous secrets of nature's 



44 6 Biological Solutions 

doings, and of inventively directing their efficiencies 
so as to bend them to the furtherance of human well- 
being ; conscious of being at times seized by the divine 
frenzy that pierces with prophetic insight into the 
brooding depths of his all-revealing self, fashioning 
forth from it into formful artistic expression the things 
that human aspirations are longing for; joyfully and 
reverentially conscious of feeling the sweep of the uni- 
versal potencies coursing through his being, and reveal- 
ing within the harmonizing repose of his conscious 
awareness the achieved wonders of their creative 
travail. 

Thus tuned to the creative trend can there be a doubt 
that life in itself is worth living ? 1 

1 See "Fatalistic Science and Human Self-determination," 
Boston," New Ideal Magazine," 1889-1890. " Ethics and Biology," 
"International Journal of Ethics," 1894. "Our Social and Ethi- 
cal Solidarity," "International Journal of Ethics," 1897. 



INDEX 



The entries under many of the headings are divided, by 
sections, referring respectively to Parts I and II of the volume. 



into two 



Absolute, the, 68, 99, 100, 105, 
142; all-comprising, 10, 107; 
transcendent, 21; preexisting, 
66; hypostasized, 120, 125; 

176; logical, 187; final, 

188; preexisting, 261. 

Action, purposive, 149; reflex, 

168; coordinate, 168; 

bodily, 2oo;aimful, 302 ; volun- 
tary. 314: purposive, instinc- 
tive, and reflex, 324; auto- 
matic. 370; purposive, 383. 

Action and reaction, 346, 402; 
modes of, 299, 300, 301. 

Activity, functional, 1, 131, 138, 
170; moral, 8; vital, 83, 145, 
160; ideal, 98; mental. 103; 
extra-conscious, 132, 137, 145; 
unknown, 136; specific, 145: 
volitional, r 45, 146, 149; in- 
terdependent, 161 ; radio, 165; 
chemical. 171; intrinsic. 171; 

purposive, 1 go .organized, 

1 98 ; functional, 208. 233, 234, 
312, 341; motor sign of, 226; 
identical, [82, 228; vital. 230, 
3 X 4. 317. 340, 400, 425; world- 
creating. 240; organic, 243; 
continual, 258; creative, 263, 
347, 421; forcible, 288; equi- 
librating. 289; sensori-motor, 
311 ; emotional. ^17; psychical, 
320; volitional, 35s; skilled. 
367, 371; teleological, 385; 
practical. 410; instinctive. 429; 
work of vital. 437 ; productive, 
■III- 

Actus purus, 22. 

Adaptation, $34, 337- 33 8 - 141 i 

Structural and functional. J36 

organized, m.<- 



Affection, 12, 37. 61; sensorial. 
16, 114, 118; modes of. 83; 
phenomenal, 153; 311. 

Agent, generating, 22; transphe- 
nomenal, 32, 88; actuating, 
38, 40; cognizing, 40; extra - 
conscious, 88; manifesting, 
133; unknown, 136; effi- 
cient , 20 2 ,344 ; power-endowed . 
203; conscious, 227; world- 
producing and actuating, 239; 
manifesting, 241 ; force-en- 
dowed, 250; causative, 251; 
acting, 252, 253; change - 
effecting, 268; invisible, 271 



protean, 



indestructible. 



272; immaterial, 275; specific, 
299; sensori-motor, 309, 315, 
320, 328; psychical and phy- 
sical ,321; psychical, 325; stim- 
ulating, 344; motor, 360; 
change-producing, 370; tele- 
ological, 384. 

Agency, 24, .;8, 39, 41, 44. 48, 
50, 71; extra-conscious. 88; 
actuating, 87; specific. 155: 

substantial. 242; foreign, 

240; phenomena-producing, 
261; efficient, 263 ; intervening. 
264; work-performing. 270: 
non-ideal, 326. 

All. the, 20. 

All-in-All, 189, 204. 

Ul-Being. 23, 99. 

Vnaxagoras, [86, 388. 

Appearances, phenomenal, 13 

56, [04; changing, 15, 45 

modes of, iS, material, 26 
extended. 26; perce pt ual, \o 

108. 122, 126, 136, [63 

evanescent. 42, 72; fleeting 

45; full-formed. 70; given, 46 

rial, 1 7 . eel vpal, 5a 



447 



44 8 



Index 



revealed, 75; mental, 85; 

forceless, 86 ; phenomenal, 

180, 194, 223, 250; evanescent, 
201, 258; perceptual, 209, 222, 
228; extended, 215; temporal, 
223; spatial, 226; transient, 
230; natural, 249; changeful, 
272; qualitative and quanti- 
tative, 303; morphological, 

340. 342. 

Apperception, synthetical unity 
of, 27, 47, 48; intellectual, 27; 
evolving, t,^; synthetized, 46; 

centralized, 78; plenitude 

of, 215; synthetic unity of, 220, 
255; divine, 239; conceptual, 
250; cognitive unity of, 253. 

Apprehension, empirical, 43, 46; 
modes of, 175; empirical, 253; 
object of, 255; intrinsic, 371; 
faculty of, 387. 

Aristotle, 52, 199, 216, 388. 

Association philosophy, 21, 87; 
245. 

Assumptions, ungrounded, 28; 
ontological, 225, 309; hy- 
pothetical, 227; metaphysical, 
228. 

Atom, material, 2 ; sensorial, 2 ; 

inert, 158, 165; moving, 

186; unextended thought, 215; 
inert, 266, 272; material, 297; 
besouled, 354. 

Atomism, Epicurean, 5; mental, 

63- 

Attraction, affinitive, 397. 

Attension, 87; 320,350,415; 

conscious, 369. 

Attributes, 4, 23, 25; special, 35; 
special, 183; infinite pos- 
sible, 213 ; infinite, 214; contra- 
dictory, 250. 

Augustine, 388. 

Automaton, conscious, 6; spirit- 
ual, ^t,; material, 325; ir- 
responsible, 400. 

Awareness, actual, 10, 32, 51, 
114; present, 56, 75; momen- 
tary, 53; modes of, 61, 112; 
ever renewed, 62; phenomen- 
ality of, 62; immediate, 93; 
moment of, 74, 94; bodily, 76, 
77; organic, 79, S2; percep- 
tual, 82, 95, 113, 125, 126, 
128, 142, 157; all-revealing 



moment of, 34; conceptual, 
75, 122, 142; changeless, 
99; visual and tactual, 100, 
121; solipsistic, 105; outer 
modes of, 154; inner modes of, 
154; responsive, 169; indi- 
vidual, 231; cognitive, 326; 
actual, 175; moment of, 175, 
176, 183; wealth of, 175; phe- 
nomenal, 176; conceptual, 177, 
178; perceptual, 178, 198,322; 
visual, 178; auditory, 178; 
transitory modes , 182; frag- 
mentary, 1 89; evanescent, 190, 
227; occasional, 191; momen- 
tary, 202; experienced, 202; 
individual, 223; spatial, 228; 
instant, 260; subjective sen- 
sorial modes of, 304, 311; 
uninformed, 329; intrinsic, 371. 
Axiom, grounding, 44, 49; of 
logic, 181; ex nihilo nihil fit, 
238, 257, 270; grounding, 258; 
fundamental, 269. 

B 

Beauty, 92. 

Being, organic, 3, 131, 160; uni- 
tary, 8, 67; totality of, 12, 7,5, 
89, 100, no, 142; real, 15; 
permanent, 16; absolute, 20, 
47, 106, 120; universal, 20, 25, 
88; noumenal, 27; identical, 
34; unconscious, 98; percipi- 
ent, 103; unextended, 105; 
monadistic, 105; ideal, 121, 
128; extra-conscious, 132; 
sense-affected, 136; sense-re- 
vealed, 108; transphenomenal, 

145; universal, 176, 187, 

189, 192 ; perceptually individ- 
ualized, 177; permanent, 183, 
185; immutable, 185; sub- 
stantial, 186. 187; totality of, 
189; perceptible, 193, '10S, 
236; ghostly. 207; enduring 
and tninking, 210; identical, 
218; timeless, 224; transphe- 
nomenal, 227; organic, 231, 
302; plurality of percipient, 
236; extra-conscious, 232, 236; 
rational, 241; psychical, 249; 
mass-motion of, 266; indis- 
cerptible organic, 311, 338; 
plurality of, 321; amoeboid, 



Index 



449 



339; humanized. 421, 443. 466 ; 
rational and ethical, 424- 

Becoming, 4, 15, 67; physical, 
6 ; continual, 2 2 ; ceaseless, 120; 
181, 346; sense-appar- 
ent, 185; formative, 388. 

Berkeley, 71, 85. 88, 91, 122, 

149; 178, 190, 201, 202, 

203, 204, 206. 207, 208, 209. 
210, 211, 218. 246, 390. 

Bichat, 315, 423- 

Black, Joseph, 289. 

Boehme, 20, 105. 

Body, 51, 60, 76, 97, 100, 131; 
organic, 12; material, 93, 129, 
132; tactual, 97; ideal, 97; 
perceptual, 98, 131; views 
of the constitution of our 
body held by: Descartes, 
Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, 
Berkeley, Hume, Kant, 

Fichte, ' Schelling, Hegel, 
Herbart, J. S. Mill. Lotze, 
10 1 ; extended and organ- 
ized, 201; extended, 217; 
organic, 217; perdurable, 275. 

Boscowich, 18. 

Brain, 80, i2q, 130, 135, 137, 

139, 146; perceptual. 93, 139, 

140, 141, 153; centers, 146; 

3*9. 323, 33° = structure, 

427 ; animal, 443. 

Bridgeman, Laura, 192. 



Curnot, vSadi, 286, 289. 

Cartesians, 7, 22, 33, 38, 93 ; objec- 
tifying, 46; synthetizing, 143; 
thinking substance of, 195. 

Categories, 44; synthetic, 64, 
220, 223; of Aristotle. u)<) , 

of causation, 112, [13; 

242. 253, 256; of Kant. 220; 
conceptional, 221. 330; of sub- 
tantiality, 222, 252; objecti- 
tying. •• 

< ausa sui. 2 r 2. 

Causation, rigorous, 7; volitional, 
28. 30; free, 30. 38-50 ;cate- 
gor\ of. 46; mechanical, 1 59; 
— ■;. 242. .' 

i . psychical, 272, 401 ; 
chanical, 300, 302: final, 396. 

ting. 40 ; 

productive, 



Cell-theory, 159. 164. 

Change, 15, 24; measurable, 49; 

180, 181, 184, 185, 220, 

224, 233, 284; identity amid, 
196, 225; universal, 199; cor- 
relative, 352. 

Chaos, meaningless, 184. 

Choice, volitional, 351, 410. 

Coexistence, geometrical, 24. 

Cognition, 61, 96, 124, 140; 
objective, 37; synthetizing. 
87; conceptual, 127, 142; 
inadequate 128; all-efficient, 

142; 311 ; awakened. 193; 

conceptual, 248; memorized, 
411. 

Cohesion, 273. 274, 282, 285, 
291, 380; force of. 289. 

Common sense, 128, 143. 

Commotion, functional, 30; 
brain. 130, 132, 147; specific 
150; organic, 197; func- 
tional, 198; heat, 287; per- 
ceptible, 318; neural, 324, 
342 ; creative. 399. 

Conception, mathematical. 3; 
mechanical, 3 ; universally 
valid, 28, 31; anti-natural, 
156; 175 ; cosmic, 213 ; sub- 
lime. 214; incompatible, 217; 
fictitious, 222; potential, 234; 
intelligent, 388; monadic, 402. 

Concepts, 12, 20, 67, 127, 140; 
general, 42; a priori, 48; 
fruitful, 49; 175; ration- 
ality of , 184; ready made, 218, 
243 ; substantialized, 261 ; self- 
evolving, 388. 

Conceptualism. 63 ; 190. 

Conduct, ethical, 9, K4; practi- 
cal, 37; rational. 1S3. 411; 

rational and ethical, 373. 
400, 403. 418, 420; moral. 
407; volitional, 414; freedom 
of volitional, 415; ascetic, 424 ; 
irrational. 4-44 ; immoral, HI- 

Conscience, awakened ethical, 
420; ethical, 421, 431) ; sense 
or. 441. 

Con SCi< >US states, .jo. 57. () 1 . 

85, 63, 70. 93, 129; evanes- 
cent ,62, 1 28 . transient, 7 j , 
remembered 7^ forceless, 9 1 ; 
unconscious, 98; [82, 208, 

230. 



45° 



Index 



Consciousness, 
tic, 104, 108, 
and potential 
vidual, 13, 28 
28; spatial 
universal, 
enduring, 
nished, 72 
78; space, 



18, 19; solipsis- 
109, 163 ; actual 
, 13. 144; 



indi- 
28, 66; in general, 
30; objective, 44 ; 
67, 68, 99, 108; 
69; richly fur- 
; time and space, 
1 1 ; constituents of , 
93; potential, 105; pheno- 
menality of , 125; perceptual, 
132 ; phenomenal play of, 153 ; 

individual, 175, 178, 189, 

203, 255; content of, 175; uni- 
versal, 177, 223; solipsistic, 
177; potential, 198; ideal con- 
tent of, 201 ; universally valid, 
220; all-revealing, '238, 437; 
evolving, 239; world-creating, 
240; space, 278; centralizing, 
351; ethical, 434; social and 
ethical, 43 5 ; rational and ethi- 
cal, 435, 436; world of, 444. 

Constitution, vital, 9; morpho- 
logical, 12, 157. 

Construction, fanciful, 7,8; 

211. 

Content of actual conscious- 
ness, 11, 13, 23, 31, 132, 162; 
experiential, 12; sensible, 26; 
all-revealing, 39, 134, 135; 
world-comprising, 98 ; impli- 
cit, no; 232, 356; sense- 
derived, 190; all-revealing, 
224, 2^3, 242, 246, 258, 330, 
365; transient, 229; solipsistic, 
232. 

Cope, E. D., 355. 

Creation, logical, 189; actual, 
388; productive, 397; ways 
of, 410. 

Creeds, pessimistic and ascetic, 
35; life-denouncing, 425. 

Criticism, 55, 56; rational, 17. 

Critique of pure reason, 5,29, 43. 

Culture, 302; rational and ethi- 
cal, 419; social, 420; social 
and ethical, 433 ; humaniz- 
ing, 442. 

D 

Darwin, 161, 353. 

Data, available, 62; perishable, 

71; experiential, 102, 120; 

conscious, 156; solipsistic, 162. 



Death, 1,71; Martyr's, 113; 

408. 

Deity, 7, 33, 55. 

Democritus, 11, 116. 

Descartes, 5, 7; 177, 199, 

200, 211, 214, 215, 216, 235, 
319, 325, 401,. 

Desire, felt, 362; objects of, 373, 
413 ; sinful, 406. 

Determinism, 7; absolute, 

403. 

Development, organic, 195, 340, 
422; vital, 302; phyletic, 327, 
336; structural, 349; progres- 
sive, 372; reproductive, 391; 
philogenetic, 396; racial, 429; 
humanizing, 421, 440; crea- 
tive, 444. 

Disintegration, 76, 149, 166; 
functional, 160; structural, 

167; functional, 234, 313, 

335. 394; of structure, 233. 

Dreams, 51, 72; 178, 207, 

211, 327. 349- 
Dualism, Kantian, 8; of mind 
and matter, 94; of body and 
mind, 130; of Descartes, 134; 

200; Cartesian, 218, 235, 

3i5- 



Ectoderm, 314. 

Effect, 6; psychical, 130; 

measurable, 226; definite, 255 
visible, 267; equivalent, 270 
perceptible, 271; mechanical. 
302; psychical, 345. 

Efficiency, realistic, 13, 64: 

causative, 48; motor, 169 ; 

causative, 240; causal. 242; 
psychical, 256; inexhaustible, 
299; potentially preexisting, 
380; creative, 391; voluntary, 
414. 

Effort, human, 302. 

Ego, 22, 87; intelligible, 27, 28, 
30, 31. 40, 46, 58, 143; uni- 
versal, 28, 29; noumenal, 30; 
empirical, 31: apperceiving, 

37; world-creating, 67; 

203, 210; substantial, 177, 240; 
all-creating, 177; intelligible, 
220, 223, 262, 404; ideal, 
37i- 



Index 



45 



Elaboration, organic, 168; phy- 
letic, 169; organizing, 169; 
structural, 170; concept- 
ual, 222. 223; cognitive, 262; 
synthetical, 263; cosmic, 300; 
developmental, 307; organic, 
309, 471; phyletic, 331; spec- 
ializing, 339; organizing, 339; 
structural, 348; volitional. 349; 
correlative, 352; structural 
and functional, 379; toilsome, 
398; integrative and disinte- 
grative, 398; creative, 417, 
437; progressive organic 425; 
developmental, 427. 

Elasticity, 273, 282, 284, 291, 
380. 

Eleatics, 16, 17, 35, 52; sages, 



34 



8< 



199, 211, 224. 



Electricity, 18; 282, 291:, 293. 

Electron, 295. 

Elements, grouped, 1 1 ; hetero- 
geneous, 1 7 ; material, 1 7 ; con- 
scious, 41 ; psychical, 41 ; con- 
stituent, 161 : hypothetical, 161 ; 

sensorial, 163 ; substantial, 

175, 206; unchangeable, 185; 
moving, 186; material, 186; 
sensorial, 204; constituent, 266; 
inert material, 266; primordial, 
294; composing, 301. 

Emotions, 21, 61, 83, 127, 133, 

155: 183. 224, 236, 314, 

316, 317, 318. 

End, in view, 383 ; designed, 385 ; 
predetermined, 391; distant, 
392 ; final, 392, 395 : proximate, 

294, ethical, 421 . 
Energetics, 267, 269, 270, 272, 

J — . 282, 284, 318. 
Energy, i<s. 19. 22. 49, 50; uni- 
versal. 10; modes of, 165; 
specific. 1 6o;« 226. 267. 293 ; 

latent or potential, 267, 274, 
2S0; kinetic, 260, 273, 277, 
•;s. 288; mechanical, 273, 284, 
-•*(;; potential, 269, 291 ; 
externally applied, --7.4. 281 ; 
oi position. 281 . consumption 
<»f. 285; psychical, 270: effect- 
producing, .'71. 
Energy, conservation of, 256, 

; 1 T'). a8i . ■■ - 
Energ} radiant . 292, 29 ^ 294, 

295, 305, 348, 380, 381 . .V s - 



Entity, identical, 4; efficient, io; 
supersensible, 11; permanent, 
15, 115; ens realissimiim ei 
perfechssimum, 25, 106; sub- 
stantial, 19, 29, 161, 162; en- 
during. 20; abiding, 50; simple 
unextended, 36; postulated. 
36; metaphysical, 52; self- 
acting, 67; foreign, 82; power- 
endowed, 87. 122, 135; dis- 
tant, 137 ; extra-conscious, 1 38; 

ideal, 140; identical. 181, 

182; relatively permanent, 1 83 ; 
universal, 192 ; fictitious. 195; 
extra-conscious, 197; inde- 
structible, 215, 266, 279, 284; 
plurality of imperishable, 216; 
purely intensive, 216; all- 
efficient, 224, 267, 271; sub- 
stantial, 224, 241, 242, 252, 
258; metaphysical, 229; en- 
during, 244, 258; ever active, 
250; force-endowed, 267, 299; 
invisible, 267; foreign, 313; 
self-acting, 328; self-subsist- 
ing; 368; all-sufficient, 438. 

Environment, 127, 143, 160, 162; 

given, 159, 165; complex, 

302; given, 356; social, 417, 
418; cultured, 419; extra-con- 
scious, 428; physical and psy- 
chical, 434; physical and social, 

^ 437: cosmic, 438. 

Epigenesis, 300. 

Epiphenomena, 50, 325, 357. 

Epistemology, 13, 27, 51I76, 93. 
96, 102, 105, 106, 120; experi- 
ential, 69; naturalistic, mi. 

113; 195, 196, 203, 262, 

263, 271; rationally justified. 

Ether, cosmic, 16, 292, 293, 298; 

vibrations. 43 1 . 432. 
Ethics, 402, 435; methods of. 

401; ascetic, 405, 406, 407, 

, 424 

Evolution, conceptual, 7, 10; 
dialectic. 1 2 ; organic, 1 3. 56 : 
logical, 1 -'. 110; ontogenel ic, 

107; phyletic, 208, 209; 

progressive, 300; embryonic, 

3.31- 
Existence, real. t8; totality of, 

■j substantial. 62, 113; con- 
tinuous. (»(,, manifest. 70. 1 38 ; 



45^ 



Index 



bodily, 76; ideality of, 85; 
mental or ideal, 87 ; concep- 
tual, 91; independent, 128; 
transphenomenal, 147;-^ in- 
dependent, 179; ideal, 183; 
bodily, 200; substantial, 184, 
255; actually experienced ,238; 
psychical, 239; extra-con- 
scious and intra-conscious, 
258; struggle for, 339, 347; 
intelligible, 390; delusive, 406; 
animal, 423; social, 409; civi- 
lized, 442. 

Existents, naturalistic, 2, 129; 
permanent, 4, 139; extra- 
conscious, 51, 54, 102, 115, 
125, 153; bodily, 83; power- 
endowed, 95, 124, 133, 163; 
inferred, 115 ; perceptible, 129, 
135; independent, 135; sense- 
affecting, 1 64 ; consciously 

represented, 184; enduring, 
184; substantial, 185, 206,334; 
vividly manifest, 188; percep- 
tible, 188, 199; sense-com- 
pelled, 190, 193; extra-con- 
scious, 190; physical, 191; 
revealed, 197; material, 199, 
230; spiritual, 207; power- 
endowed, 209, 233, 364; per- 
ceptually extended, 212; iden- 
tical, 214; inferential, 219; 
perishing, 240; foreign, 311; 
unitary, 337. 

Experience, contingent, 4; re- 
membered, 12; systematized, 
12, 13, 112; actual and mem- 
orized, 13, 22, 36, 53, 141, 143, 
154; rational, 28; post natal, 
56; previous, 58; causal, 60; 
past, 70, 95; associated, 74; 
gathered, 74; bodily, 7 7 ; latent, 
78, 92; subjective, 83; inner 
and outer, 84; perceptual, 139, 
140, 152; concurrent, 141; in- 
trospective, 152 ; intimate, 153; 
physical, 154; psychical, 154; 
past, 176; real, 178; sense- 
stimulated, 178; scientific, 179, 
1 96; unity of, 180; actual, 184; 
latent, 191; latent fund, 191; 
remembered, 192, 246, 327; 
fund of memorized, 194, 332, 
433; fund of latent, 210; 
actual human, 212; instruc- 



tive, 218; memorized, 221, 
326, 328, 350, 351, 387, 411; 
memorized and systematized, 
234; gathered, 240; priority 
of sensorial, 247; sense-given, 
247, 386; sensorial, 248; em- 
pirical, 256; sensible, 267; 
psychical, 312, 317; sentient, 
323; familiar, 283; latently 
harbored, 393; organically 
memorized, 416; post natal, 
429; racial, 429, 430. 

Experientialism, 247. 

Extension, 5, 23; spatial, 4; 
attribute of, 24, 99; content 
of, 25; bodily, 96 ; attri- 
bute of, 201, 213. 

F 

Fact, cognitive, 90; existential, 
91 ; biological, 100, 158; sense- 
revealed, in; individual, 
118; physical, 146; experi- 
enced, 194; volitional, 204, 
208; undeniable, 209; directly 
given, 227, 321; biological, 
342. 

Faculties, perceptual, 178; psy- 
chic, 241, 263; a priori, 248; 
remembering, 254; physical 
and psychical, 409; organized, 
410; moral, 418; humanized, 
420; potential, 420; spiritual, 

^ 439 \ 
Farraday, 18. 

Fate, 32. 

Feeling, 61, 62, 63, 83, 127, 149; 
bodily, 76; transient, 77; 
localized, 80; organic, 81, 97; 
pleasurable, 149 ; 183 ; or- 
ganic, 360; tactual, 363; plea- 
surable, 423; altruistic, 441; 
primitive tactual, 441. 

Fiat, divine, 33, 122; volitional, 
146; divine, 177, 178, 210. 

Fichte, 21, 22, 23, 29, 58, 66, 68, 

78, 107, 122; 177, 224, 

240, 388, 405. 

Flechsig, 371, 379. 

Flux, perpetual, 21, 22, 26; of 
time, 32, 36, 43. 

Force, 22, 24, 38, 40, 44, 49; 

psychical, 22; 226, 239, 

250, 277; moving and direct- 
ing, 186; self-acting, 214, 215, 



Index 



453 



2 1 6 , 217; cause of motion and 
change, 216; psychic, 240; 
dynamical, 252; moving, 267; 
imponderable, 268; invisible, 
278; elastic, 283; cohesive, 
289; environing, 402. 

Form, geometrical, 25; concep- 
tual, 11; organically felt, 77; 
colored, 129; bodily, 131; 
visual and tactual, 153; 
symmetries of, 166. 

Friction, 279. 280, 284. 

Freedom, moral, 7. 

Function, synthetical, 44; vital, 
75 ; physiological, 130 ; specific, 

134; monadic, 215 ; bodily, 

230, 319; manifest, 233; a 
priori, 253; vital, 314; spe- 
cialized, 341; sensorial, 341; 
contractile, 324; adapted, 341 ; 
automatic, 350. 

Future, the, 75; 199. 

G 

Galileo, 5. 

Gassendi, 5. 

Gravitation, 276, 282. 

Gravity, 273, 280, 281, 291, 380. 

Grove, W. R., 49. 

H. 

Haeckel, 161; 333- 354. 3 88 - 

Habit, 63, 87; acquired, 351 ; 

ingrained, 374. 
Harmony preestablished, 32, ^^, 

145. e'volutionally developed, 

1 3 7 "• 2I 9. 333^ 3 6 4- 376, 

433. 434- 
Heat. iS; 273, 284, 285, 286, 

287, 292; dissipation of, 287. 
Hegel, 8. 20, 21, 58, 65, 66, 67, 

68, 143; 224. 

I leliotropism, 374. 

Helium. 2^4. 

I [elmholtz, 49. 1 59. 

rleraclitus, 21, 32; 185, 199. 

Herbart, 101. 105. 

Hobbes, 5 ; 408. 

on, Shadworth, =;<;• 
Hume. 10. 39. 41, 42, 58, 63, 

65, 122. 142 ; 201 , 202, 203, 

210. - 240, 242, 

Hunger, (>o. <>i . [48, 1 \<>. 1 50; 



401. 



I 



Idea, the absolute, 143; the 

all-comprising eternal, 388. 

Ideas. 25, 61, 119, 127; remem- 
bered, 59, 63; system of, 38, 
120, 126; fleeting, 112; tran- 
scendentally revealed, 121; 
system of perfect, 140; inade- 
quate, 156; 188, 240; com- 
plexes of, 193; systematized, 
360. 

Idealism, 3, 51, 55, 87, 88, 94; 
pure, 2, 29, 31, 91, 92, 100, 
103, 104, 106, 112, 118, 128, 
135, 164; sensualistic, 19, 124; 
transcendental, 28, 95, 96, 
105, 108, no, in, 119, 120. 
122, 126, 140, 142; absolute, 
28, 29, 30; Kant's refutation 
of, 29; volitional, 31; intel- 
lectual, 31, 54, 89, 128, 139; 
nominalistic, 42, 65, 71, 89, 
98; sensorial, 52, 63, 140; 
mental, 69; post Kantian, 89; 
conceptual, 98; sensualistic, 

126; 176, 192; pure, 175, 

183, 195, 214, 218, 232, 260, 
325; subjective, 178, 219, 229; 
system of objective, 218; 
nominalistic, 201, 204, 211, 
246; perceptual, 219; tran- 
scendental, 219, 220, 253, 412; 
solipsistic, 232; sensorial. 244; 
conceptual, 256, 261; critical, 
262. 

Idealists, 76; nominalistic, 63; 
convinced, 85; introspective, 
1 1 1 ; pure. 112, 150; concep- 
tual, 141 ; consistent, 149; 

transcendental. 176. 238; nom- 
inalistic, 203; sensorial, 210. 

Identity, 3. 32-38, no, 120: 
logical, 34; metaphysical, 31: 
subjective, 34: personal, 72; 

1 cS 1 . 183. [84, [85, 1 9 1 . 

amid change, 198, 233. 
527 ; substantial. 1 99, 234 ; 
]m rsonal, 20 1 ; eterna I 

sustained, 
330; structural, 314; and 
r 'tv. 334. 

I 11US!' 

Imagination, 22; reproductive, 
7 . productive, 100. m; 



454 



Index 






256; reproductive, 254; 

symbolically all-inclusive, 386 ; 
productive, 431. 

Implications, naturalistic, 124- 
157 ; realistic, 40, 53 ; psychical, 
57; conscious, 57; nihilistic, 

69; logical, 123; realistic, 

357. 359, 43°; transphenom- 
enal, 227; extra-conscious, 
261; causative, 262; epistemo- 
logical, 273; momentous, 369. 

Impressions, 63; sensory, 51; 
vivid, 65; compelled sensorial, 

119; sensorial, 120; vivid, 

240, 245, 246; present, 245. 

Impulsions, 155. 

Individual, sense-apparent, 29; 
perceiving, 55; perceptible, 
118; perceptual, 140; willing, 
146, 147; organic, 150; unity 
of organic, 161; unitary, 161; 

living, 198; spiritual, 209; 

percipient, 2 09; conscious, 256; 
sensori-motor, 330, 331; indis- 
cerptible, 350; self-rounded, 

438- 

Inertia, law of, 5. 

Inference, realistic, 55, 86, 93; 

instinctive, i84;epistemo- 

logical, 196; sight-stimulated, 
209; conceptually abstracted, 
216; epistemologically justi- 
fied, 231 ; realistic, 232. 

Influence, foreign, 29, 82, 84; 
inciting, 82, 167; stimulating, 
82, 83, 93, 132, 136, 166; 
sense-compelling, 92; radiant, 

136; disintegrating, 166; 

outside, 179; sense-affecting, 
1 79; stimulating, 193, 197,334, 
344; external, ,218; sense- 
compelling, 228; causati ve , 
253; retarding, 279; accelerat- 
ing; 281; change- producing, 
292; foreign, 311; efficient, 
328; deteriorating, 351; dis- 
integrating, 394; self-deter- 
mined, 403; cosmic, 438. 

Inhibition, 369. 

Interpretation, philosophical, 3, 
5; mechanical, 50; solipsistic, 
163; scientific, 164; mistaken, 

170; philosophical, 180; 

ontological, 196; experiential, 
247. 



Intellect, 4, 13, 25, 28, 31; appre- 
hending, 46 ; rudimentary, 1 19. 

Intelligence, 12, 87, 88; univer- 
sal; 67, 99, 125, 139; 383, 

3 8 4, 3 8 5> 3 8 9, 443; uncon- 
scious, 384; supreme, 385, 386; 
creative, 387 ; conceptual, 388 ; 

Intuition, time, and space forms 
of, 46 ; sense, 47 ; ontological, 
106 ; intellectual, 107 ; logi- 
cal, 269. 

J 

James, William, 79; 316, 319. 

Joule, 289. 

Judgments, analytical, 12; 

182, 183; valid, 1 94 ; analytical, 

412. 

K 

Kant, 5, 7, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 
37, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 58, 64, 
65, 66, 89, 106, 107, 109, 112, 

142, 143; 178, 180, 184, 

192, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 
223, 224, 242, 247, 249, 250, 
251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 

259, 26 2, 33°, 379, 3%7< 3 88 , 
404, 412. 

Keller, Helen, 192, 371. 

Knowledge, accrued, 12; uni- 
versally valid, 31, 44, 48, 64; 
fabric of, 43, 71; essential, 56; 
objective, 56, 58; rational, 59; 
accumulated and ordered, 59; 
transphenomenal, 66; latent, 
73 ; memorized and systema- 
tized, 73, 90; signalized, 74; 
comprehensive, 83 ; ready- 
made, 87, 120; consistent, 87; 
coherent, 89; biological, 100; 
potential, 1 10 ; perceptual, 135 ; 
representative, 141; concep- 
tual, 141; implicit, 143; in- 
structive, 151; scientific, 165; 

valid, 184, 232; latently 

systematized, 191; potential, 

191, 194; objective validity of, 

192, 254; sense-informed, 193; 
consolidated, 229; verifiable, 
231; particulars of, 243; in- 
structive, 247 ; universally 
valid, 249; unified body of, 250, 
261 ; system of, 326, scientific, 
328, 34Q; latently preserved, 
330 ; perceptually revealed, 359. 



Index 



455 



Lange. C. 316. 
Language, cultured, 418. 
Latency, 11, 57. 75; conceptual. 

9; extra-conscious, 36, 65, 84, 

86, 99: undifferentiated, 107; 

extra-conscious, 182, 191. 

198, 228; unconscious, 426. 
Leibnitz, 5. 7, 21, 22. 23, 31, S3- 

38. 39. 67, 98, 99, 103. 104. 

105, 109, 122, 143; 178, 



179, 180, 214, 



216. 217, 



218, 239, 240, 354, 403. 
Life, 34, 161, 171 ; conscious, 72, 

84 ; forms of, 72, 162; 190, 

J 97> 333> 335 > conduct of, 229, 
303, 359; of the organism, 233; 
forms of, 309, 353; functions 
of, 313; an abstract concept 
of, 313; of outside relations, 
314; social and ethical con- 
duct of, 314; origin of, ^33- 
primitive forms of, 337 ; primi- 
tive. 338; plant, 346; organic. 
355; perennial, 382; precari- 
ous, 406: cultured. 417, 418. 
442; social, 419, 434. 439: 
entodermic, 425, 436; waking. 
434; religious, 439; saintly. 

439- 

Light. 137; 292. 346. 374. 

Locke. 5. 143; 244. 

Logic, formal, 247 ; analytic, 252 ; 

deductive, 243. 
Lotze, 10 1. 
Love, 144, i53- 



M 



Much. Krnst. 165. 

Machine, conceptual, 218. 

Macrocosm, transphenomenal, 
()2 ; sense-revealed, 112; extra - 

conscious, 134,1 52 ; power- 

endowed, 442. 

Malebranche, 7.. 109; r 78. 

248. 

Manifestation, fleeting. 26; psy- 
chical, 50, 60; multifold. 

1 07 ; psychical.- 20 1 . 

Manifold, the changeful. rO, 35, 
: lerience, 24 ; diverse 
\6 ien "rial, 222. 

Many, the, \. 25, [42, 1 13. 



Mass. 5: 267. 273, 277, 282, 

296; inert, 267; resistent, 278; 
in motion, 279; equilibrated, 
282; elastic, 283; forcibly ex- 
panded, 287; expanding. 290; 
power-endowed, 299. 

Material, sense, 26; sense-given, 
29; transphenomenal, 45; sen- 
sorial, 46, 63: building. 63; 
dream-like, 85 ; perishable, 86 ; 
sense-revealed, 89; comple- 

mental,i6o.i67 ; sensorial, 

179, 189, 220, 222. 248, 250, 
262; sense-given. 220. 385; 
available, 227: given. 238; 
nutritive, 313, 335; comple- 
mental. 333, 352; restitutive, 
336; extra-conscious, 391: re- 
integrative, 394: plastic. 415. 
cognitive, 431. 

Materialism. 45. 52, 54. 93, Q4. 

95; philosophical; 164; 

222. 

Materialists. 63; 27,5. 

Matrix abiding. 10. it, 37. 67, 
141: hidden, 12; substantial, 
21; permanent. 31, 36, 56, 
124: manifesting, 45: pre- 
serving and issuing, 54, 88; of 
change. 68; emanating. 70; 
extra-conscious, 34. 94, 95, 
99, 109; enduring. 86. 142; 
unconscious. 107; all-com- 
prising, 108; real. 120. 137; of 
consciousness, 130 ; actuating. 

50,54. 133: efficient. 138; 

all-comprising, 176, 190; ex- 
tra-conscious, 189, 1 q 1 . 192, 
259. 260, 263. 327 ; underlying. 
192, 228; of potential con- 
sciousness, 194, 428; organiz- 
ation of, 197 ; substantial, 198, 
225, 239, 241. 250 ; permanent. 
210, 216; actuating, 224; issu- 
ing. 234; identically enduring. 
238; living. 306; organic. 33 1 . 
359; of speech, 368; vital, 426; 
435; preserving, 430. 

Matter. 11. 17.27.31.45. 1 58; 
cosmic, 16; phenomenal. 45; 

substantial, 49 ; animated . 

1S5; moved, 186; inert, 211 
dynamical theory of, 252; and 
motion, 266, 366; theory "i, 
296 ; inanimate. 335. 



45 6 



Index 



Mayer, J. R., 19, 49, 158; 

289. 

Measurement, 275; extensive 
and intensive, 276; physical, 
306. 

Mechanics, atomic, 1, 3, 5; 

atomic, 186, 266, 267, 275, 
284, 291, 293; theoretical, 
266, 278; applied, 342. 

Mechanism, organic, 171; 

morphological, 343. 

Medium, 136, 155, 166; inter- 
vening, 135, 156; interaction 

with, 167; natural, 231, 

intervening, 292; indifferent, 
293; interstellar, 293; emit- 
ting, 296; all-revealing, 314; 
psychical, 319, 324; given, 333 ', 
preexisting, 392; social, 372; 
cosmic, 397. 

Memory, 20, 59, 63, 73, no, 163; 
potential, 36, 86, 117; latent, 

130; 210, 229, 239, 240, 

350, 354; reproductive, 260; 
organically connected, 331; 
potential, 372, 432; conscious, 
426; latently organized, 430; 
actualized, 432. 

Metameres, 168. 

Microcosm, 62; individual, 71; 

conscious, 75, 83, 84; 

cognitively enlightened, 441; 
sentient and cognizant, 443. 

Mill, J. S., 54, 101. 

Mind, 50, 56, 60, 87, 94, 131; 

stuff, 125, 128, 138; 203, 

204, 209, 216, 235; potential, 
230; and body, 321; reader, 
322; stuff, 327, 434. 

Monad, 32, 33, 38, 39, 98, 99, 
103, 104, 109, 143; supreme, 

33; apperceiving, 34; 

215, 216, 218, 239; window- 
less, 278, 279; self-secluded, 
217. 

Monadology, 33, io 5, J 43! 

215. 

Monism, psychical, 236. 

Motion, 3, 5, 15, 19, 40, 49, 94, 
< 150; imparted, 6; molecular, 

129; functional, 151; 218, 

225, 235, 236, 298; perceptible, 
215; mechanical modes of, 
200 ; reader, 322. 

Motive, to action, 413. 



Movements, necessitated, 7 ; 
bodily, 81, 145, 146; appre- 
hended, 146; purposive, 147, 
149; bodily, 200; pur- 
posive, 333, 343, 361; volun- 
tary, 320, 415; reactive; 332; 
instinctive, 366; volitional, 

37i- 

Mundus, intelligibilis, 31, 47; 
sensibilis, 47; phenomenon, 
3 1 ; noumenon, 3 1 ; sensi- 
bilis, 248; intelligibilis, 248. 

Multiplicity, 23, 24; simul- 
taneously perceived, 217. 

Mystics, 35. 

Mysticism, theistic of Male- 
branche, 248. 

N 
Naegeli, 354. 

Naturalism, 2, 3, 42, 96, 105, 
in ; epistemological, 100, 140, 

143; 195- 

Necessity, absolute, 6; logical, 

7, 25; phenomenal, 30; fatal- 
istic, 104; objective, 255; 

mechanical, 297, 303, 402; 

absolute, 297; unbroken of 

occurrences, 307; causative, 

402. 
Needs, organic, 76, 90, 91, 92; 

higher, 92; instinctive, 126; 

organic, 311, 313, 360, 

422 ; integrative, 347 ; felt, 362 ; 

affective and intellectual, 373 ; 

appetitive, 433, 441; comple- 

mental, 436. 
Neo-Hegelians, 388. 
Neo-Kantians, 253. 
Neo-Platonism, 2, 99, 107. 
Nerves, motor, 151. 
Newton, 5. 
Nexus, 146; volitional, 147; 

organic, 150; creative, 151; 

causative, 402. 

Nihil est in intellectu etc., 43. 

143; nisi ipse intellectus, 43, 

.143: 2 44- 

Nihilism, 10, 20, 35, 42, 60, 89, 
124, 163; idealistic, 109; phe- 
nomenal, 113 ; sensational, 

187; phenomenalistic, 225, 

357- 
Nirvana, 35. 
Nominalism, 187, 199. 



Index 



457 



Nonsubstantialism, 39, 58, 65, 

I24; 183, 202, 211, 24O, 

246. 

Nothing, the, 20, 35; mysti- 
cal, 189. 

Notion, 119, 140, self-evolving, 
8. 

Noumena, 65. 



Object, 8, 56, 57; perceptible, 
50, 136; of cognition, 58; per- 
ceptual, 59, 74; apprehended, 
59; tangible, 73; percep- 
tual, 358. 

Occasionalism, 145. 

Occam, 52. 

One, the, 4, 20, 25; unconscious, 

99- io 7- 

One-and-all, 52, 103, 104; pri- 
mordial, 68, 185, 316; sub- 
stantial, 211; unerring, 211, 
217. 

Ontogenesis, experimental, 164. 

Ontology, 69; intuitional, 13; 
absolutistic, 23 ; metaphysical, 

3°- 

Order, phenomenal, 31; divinely 

fated, 32 ; experiential, 42 ; 

rationally fated, 185; phenom- 
enal, 252; binding, 254; sys- 
tematized, 193 ; significant and 
coherent, 241 ; apprehended, 
252; empirical, 253; preestab- 
lished, 260; cosmic, 399. 

Ordering, conceptual, n. 

Organ, central, 80, 81; sensory, 
Si. 166, 169; of sense, 81; 
extra-conscious, 135; motor, 
[66; ectodermic, 168; ento- 

dermic, 168; sensory, 310, 

bodily, 318, 31 <; ; execu- 
tive, 385, 400, 413; entoder- 
mic, 315; ectodermic, 436. 

< 'rganism, 8i, 129, 130, 133, 
1 (-'. it;. 153, [60, 1 6 1 , 171; 
living. 97, 102 ; bodily, 1 -; 1 ; 
perceptual, 132; perceived, 
131; perceptually revealed, 

animal. [68; unitary, 

— 227, 23 1 : perceptible, 

1 0; , living, 1 <>5, 1 07. 208, •■ m . 

- life of 2 j 1 . bodily, 

perceptually revealed, 

vital, io() . mechani- 



cal, 313; adult, 396; unitary, 
396; sensori-motor, 429. 
Organization preestablished, 1 2 ; 
mental, 75; vital, 77, 139, 159; 
significant, 138; complex, 162; 

193; specific, 235; vitally 

functioning, 235; affective, 
246; vital, 246, 263, 330; pro- 
ductive and reproductive, 264 ; 
progressive, 336; sensori-mo- 
tor, 336; phyletically elabor- 
ated, 355; teleological, 393; 
inferior, 417; deficient, 419: 
inherited, 433. 



79; 



207, 208, 31S, 



Pain, 7! 

3 2 3- 
Panlogism, 52, 69; cognitive, 8; 

190, 261, 388. 

Pantheism, volitional, 8; logical. 

5 2 - 

Parallelism, psychophysical, 6. 

112, 130; 235, 315, 326. 

402. 

Parmenides, 25, 53. 

Particles, 17; ultimate, 18; 

inert material, 275. 

Particulars, comprised, 21, 51. 
53, 55; of sense, 52; sensorial, 
54; 187,189, 194; sense-de- 
rived, 188; perceptual, 190, 
218; psychical, 201 ; intensive, 
217; inert material, 293; neu- 
ral, 324; minimal, 375. 

Past, the irrecoverable, 32, 69; 
vanished. 54. 

Percept, 83, 91, 94, 102, 114, 
131; visual. 73, 93, 97; sense- 
woven, 93; sense-compelled , 
1 00 ; signalizing, 115; evanes- 
cent, 122, 139; casual and 
vanishing, 125; sense-stimu- 
lated, 134; stimulated, 154. 

compelled, 143; 176, 202, 

206, 207, 20()\ vividly definite, 
1 78 . rationality of, 1 84 ; identi- 
cally abiding, [84; sense- 
woven, [88, 228; sense-stimu- 
lated, [90; compulsory. 203; 
compelled, .'07. 252; extended, 
218; seemingly identical. • >£ 
identity of, 234; revealing, 
auditory, 305. 



45 8 



Index 



Perceptions, 19, 20, 31, 61; 
spatial, 27 ; evolving, 3 3 ; transi- 
tory, 50; subjective nature 

of, 186; sense-woven, 187; 
space, 216; motor, 312; ex- 
tended, 217; sense, 318. 

Percipient, 81, 82, 103, 108, 113, 

135, 136, 137, 152; 193, 

210, 237, 264; plurality of, 
196, 209; individuated, 217; 
outside, 322. 

Perfection, divine, 215. 

Pessimism, 24; 405. 

Phenomena, physical, 6; fleet- 
ing, 10 ; experienced, 10 ; sense, 
16; unsubstantial, 17; per- 
ceptual, 20, 128; perceptible, 
49, 162, 163; perishing, 53; 
mental or ideal, 97; evanes- 
cent, 69, 129; equivalent, 69; 
transient, 61, 90; flowing and 
vanishing, 62; forceless, 71; 
psychic, 132, 159; visual, 153; 

vital, 171; insubstantial, 

1 76; ideal, 176; dwindling, 184; 
consciously experienced, 112; 
transient, 218; subjective, 222; 
psychic, 239, 316; sense-stim- 
ulated, 243; physical, 316, 
322, 342, 401; vital, 375. 

Phenomenalism, 10, 19, 39, 40, 
41, 42, 52, 53, 62, 64, 122, 
124; idealistic, 60; extreme, 
86; solipsistic, 134, 139; sym- 
bolical, 151; nihilistic, 1 76, 

177, 183, 187, 202; sensorial, 
202, 204, 205, 207, 210, 211; 
individual, 220; perceptual, 
206, 208, 209; evanescent and 
sub j ect i ve , 226; solipsistic , 
227, 231, 271, 272; forceless, 
240; visual, 265; pure, 277. 

Philosophy, transcendental, 43, 
47,65 ; idealistic, 183 criti- 
cal, 220. 

Physics, 151; science of per- 
ceptual appearances, 265 ; 
pure visual, 278. 

Plato, 19, 52; 199, 216, 240. 

Pleasure and pain, 423. 

Plotinus, 20, 21, 67, 105, 107. 

Potency, 26, 135; qualitative, 

19; vital, 155, 167; psychic, 

214; incomprehensible, 193; 
qualitatively distinct, 307 ; 



glorified, 382; intrinsically 
elaborated, 343; extra-con- 
scious, 345; creative, 388, 391, 
393; sense-hidden, 426. 

Power, moving, 17; creative, 
28; actuating, 38; organizing, 
59; systematizing and sub- 
stantializing, 60; synthetic, 
65, 88; unremitting, 135; 
volitional, 146; activity-con- 
trolling, 146; self-acting, 150; 

sense-stimulating, 209; 

self-acting, 214; acting, 259; 
psychical, 240; pressure resist- 
ing and imparting, 276, 278; 
working, 279; world-creating, 
316; causative, 362 ; volitional, 
367, 400; formative. 410; 
creative, 425. 

Present, the, 74. 78, 117; 

238; 359. 

Principles, mathematical and 
mechanical, 5, 9; actuating, 
18; geometrical, 25; a priori, 
48 ; guiding, 49 ; solidi- 
fying, 240; biological, 340; 
guiding, 383. 

Problems, fundamental, 13; ep- 
istemological, 28, 31, 66, 68, 
90, 95, 124, 159; of substan- 
tiality, 32, 162; of causation, 
47; philosophical, 157, 158; 
of biology, 158; of life, 160; 

of substantiality, 183, 

184, 223, 225; profound and 
essential, 245; of causation, 
250, 260, 263 ; unsolvable, 320. 

Process, dynamical, 313; vital, 
330; sensori-motor. 363; tele- 
ological, 383. 

Properties, intrinsic, 26; geo- 
metrical, 48 ; essential, 

270; specific, 290. 

Propositions, mathematical, 6 ; 
synthetical, 42, 47; analyti- 
cal, 42 ; synthetical, 267 ; 

analytical, 247; mathematical, 
248; a priori synthetical, 248. 

Protagoras, 10, 19,53; *86, 

244. 

Protoplasm, vital properties of, 
159; vitality and organiza- 
tion of , 160; 346. 

Psychology, 40, 56; phenomena - 
listic, 41, 153. 



Index 



459 



Quality, 18; staying. 53; 

perceived, 304. 
Quantity, 277. 
Question, epistemological, 98. 

R 

Radium, 294. 

Reaction, 37; motor, 168. 

Realism, naturalistic, 121, 123; 

conceptual, 187; ideal, 

199. 

Reality, 85, 126, 142, 144; 
abiding, 4; eternal. 12; uni- 
versal. 20; universally valid, 
28; supreme, 35; transphe- 
nomenal, 64, 104, in; con- 
ceptual, 66; non-ideal. 85; 
self-subsisting, 124; timeless 
and spaceless, 96. 

Reason, 4, 12, 22, 24, 32, 87, 109; 
absolute, 28; universal, 10; 
pure. 27, 47; creative power 
of, 29; synthetizing, 29; ab- 
stract notion, 144; 186, 

405. 408, 412, 443; universal, 
256; valid, 381. 

Reason and consequent, 24, 42. 

Reintegration, 76, 149; func- 
tional, 160; 233, 234,313, 

33°> 351, 436; structural, 314; 
functional, 394. 

Representation, conceptual, 83; 

remembered, 152; percep- 

tual, 236. 

Resistance, 279, 283; counter- 
acting, 287; strenuous, 328. 

S 

Scepticism, 19; 186. 

Schelling, 8, 20, 21, 24, 58, 67, 

68,99, 101, 105, 107, 143; 

224. 
Schopenhauer, 24, 29, 67, 68, 

22 4, 3 l S> 33 l < 3 88 - 401, 

405. 423. 424- 
ScotUS Krigina, 21, 52. 
Self-acting, 349, 402. 
Self-actuated, 203. 
Self-caused, 203, 212, 213, 257. 

Self-determination. 9; psychical, 

53; predestined power of, 

2 1 1 ; human 297. 373; indi- 
vidual. 400; volitional, 401 ; free 
moral, 404; ethical, 404. 



Self-existence, 76. 93, 114, 127; 
177; of conscious content. 

2 39- 
Self-feeling, 76, 77. 83, 170; 

3°9- 3". 33*- 37 7 : - organism. 
342 ; functionally aroused, 345 ; 
general. 35 t ; modifications of, 

37 6 - 

Self-movement, 77, 309. 

Self-moving, 170. 

Sensation, 61, 63, 80, 114, 131, 
146, 147, 149, 150; inner or or- 
ganic, 76, 83, 102; olfactory, 
90; auditory, 93, 119; visual, 
93, contact, 97 ; visual and tac- 
tual. 115; externally stimu- 
lated, 131; tactual, 135; 

175, 202, 218, 235; self-exist- 
ing' and self-conscious, 204; 
synthetical, 263. 

Sense, 4, 109; organs of, 166; 
inner, 26, 28, 43; illusive, 98, 
140; stimulated, 237. 

Sensibilities, 29, in; potential, 
64 ; modes of, 81, 124; attuned , 
81 ; sensorial, 81, 82, 117, 119, 
122, 136; the observer's, 125; 

visual, 137; perceptive. 

186; organic, 331, 416; visual 
and auditory, 305; emotional. 

4i5- 
Sentiency, 309, 310, 313, 315, 

3 2 3. 333. 35o. 357- 3 6 5- 397. 
403- 

Sensualism, 125. 

Sentiments, altruistic, 441 ; cul- 
turally elaborated, 443. 

Signal, temporal, 57; directly 
awakened, 58; cognitive, 92; 
bodily, 319. 

Signs, linguistic, 58; verbal, 59; 
direct and indirect, 73; preg- 
nant, 737; conscious, 74. 91; 
representative, 75, 141; local, 
77, 147; objective, 90; cogni- 
tive, 91, 92; ideal, 94; sen- 
sorially awakened, 116; 
tactual linguistic, 119; sen- 
sorial, 122, 128, 1 29; phe- 
nomenal, [29; direct. 135; 
symbolical, 136; reliable, 151; 

conscious, igi; verbal, 

1 ()2 ; Consciousness awakening, 

1 (j 1 . voluntary, 195 ; linguistic, 
195, 329, 419, is'. 4341 sen- 



460 



Index 



163; 

256, 



sonal, 197; warning, 207 
measurable, 275; visual, 290 
revealing, 303 ; perceptual, 304. 
forceless, 305; motor, 324: 
representative, 332; articu- 
lated, 368; local, 371; invo- 
luted, 415. 

Sidgwick, Henry, 401. 

Sleep, 97; 313, 330, 422. 

Social progress, 294. 

Socrates, 182. 

Solipsism, 28, 60, 108, 123, 

176, 177, 179, 220, 

292, 391; phenomenalistic, 
197, 219; monadic, 205; ideal- 
istic, 219, 249. 

Sophists, 19. 

Soul, 40; 203, 209, 210, 219. 

Space, 3, 4, 15, 26, 39, 131, 140; 
geometrical, 23 ; visual, 74, 
1 1 7 ; relations, 78; implied, 79; 
perception, 79; colored, 136; 
limitations, 90; consciousness, 
117; tactual, 117; subjec- 
tive, 221 ; form of outer sense, 
248 ; objective, 264; visual, 304. 

Spatial perceptions, 47 ; posi- 
tion, 80; features, 137; ar- 
rangement, 185; appearances, 
221 ; distances, 265. 

Speculation, philosophical, .3, 
35, 100; idealistic, 156. 

Spencer, 353. 

Spinoza, 5, 7, 8, 21, 22, 23, 24, 

2 5- 26, 35. 67; 177, 211, 

212, 213, 214, 315, 403. 

Spirit, 2, 12, 102; 203, 208, 

209. 

Spiritism, 207. 

Stimulation, 81, 169; external, 
83, 127; sense, 126, 130, 131, 

146; sensory, 167; sense, 

178, 210, 318, 322, 343; sen- 
sorial, 208, 414; dynamical 
modes of , 264; external, 309. 

Stress, 281, 282, 286, 289, 290, 
292; inscrutable creative, 
436; creative, 440. 

Structure, brain, 13, 138, 142, 
147; permanent, 60; ideal, 
63; neural, 81; organized, 
137; complex, 138; intricate, 
150; chemical, 166; synthetic 

neural, 169; higher, 170; ■ 

brain, 197; vitally sustained. 



198; neural, 198; function- 
ing, 233, 234; underlying, 
233; surface, 310, 339; syn- 
thetical, 311 ; anatomical, 329; 
organized, 330; ectodermic, 
335, 336; morphological, 
362 ; educationally elaborated, 
349; sensori-motor, 351; pre- 
determined, 391. 

Subject, 8, 56, 57, 58, 59; per- 
ceiving, 17 ; transphenomenal, 
2,T\ apprehended, 54; subject- 
object, 58, 143; observed, 
130, 131, 132, 138, 145, 151, 
152; power-endowed, 132; ex- 
tra-conscious, 134, 146; actu- 
ating, 147; volitionally en- 
dowed, 149; acting, 150, 151; 
enduring, 241 ; apprehend- 
ing, 242; observed, 321, 327; 
sensori-motor, 322; feeling, 
360; functioning, 427. 

Substance, unitary, 4; un- 
changeable, 16; homogene- 
ous, 17; absolute, 23, 25, 35, 
67 ; formless and quiescent, 24 ; 
inferred, 26; substantia phe- 
nomenon, 27, 45; substantia 
noumenon, 27; permanent, 
31, 45; identical, 34; inactive, 
34; simple, 38; manifesting, 
86; genuine, 109; properties 
of, 120; force-endowed, 158; 
the living, 138, 160, 164, 165, 
166, 170, 171; contractile, 
166; permanent, 177; ab- 
solute, 178, 187, 211, 212,315; 
divine, 178; identical, 180, 
216, 221; immutable, 181; 
universal, 192; veritable, 197; 
conception of, 199; timeless, 

199, 211; hypothetical, 200; 
space-filling, 200; thinking, 

200, 215, 218; extended, 200, 
218; psychical, 201, 239; 
group of, 205; ontologically 
posited, 213; Eleatic, 215; 
monadic, 215; ideal, 218; un- 
derlying, 221, 255; substantia 
phenomenon, 222, 251, 256; 
substantia noumenon, 223; 
all-efficient substantia nou- 
menon, 223; identically abid- 
ing, 226; genuine, 234; living, 
2 35> 309. 3 12 , 3*3< 3 l6 . 320, 



Index 



461 



321, 327, 334, 394; veritable, 
233; idea of, 240; phenomena- 
issuing, 250: force-endowed, 
252; causative, 256; vitally 
fluent, 341; composite, 394; 
protogenetic, 398; sensori- 
motor, 427. 

Substantiality, 15-31, 38, 40, 
109; material, 17; category of, 

45; 180-236; problem of, 

1 80 ; material, 199; ideal, 199; 
permanent, 203; universal, 
213; conception of, 214; force- 
endowed, 2 56; category of, 220. 

Synthesis ontological, 8. 

Synthetical unity of appercep- 
tion, 44; 220, 223. 

Systems, untenable, 210; onto- 
logical, 213; idealistic, 320; 
materialistic, 321; sensori- 
motor, 378. 



Tabula rasa, 56; 143. 

Teleology, 383-400; uncon- 
scious, 384; in nature, 385; 
natural, 386, 387; genuine, 

39 1 - 

Iheory, atomic, 17; mechanical, 
[58, 165; aggregational, 161; 

illogical, 161 ; eminently 

helpful, 266; kinetic of gases, 
284: mechanical, 300, 370, 
374; leading of biologists, 325; 
conscious automaton, 325. 

Theory of knowledge, 50, 60, 
72, 86, ()(>, i 13, 163; de- 
ficient, 265. 

Things, changeful, 16; perishing, 
21; discrete. 48; perceptible, 

[63; changing, 185; 

perceptible, 186, [88. 

Thing-in-itself, 22, 29, 31, 43, 64; 

252; sense-meeting, 219; 

:■) : unknow- 
able, 262. 

Thought, 23, 25, 34, 61, 88, 102; 
normative. 4 ; discourse 

conceptual, 89, 95; prede- 
termined, 103; denatural- 
ized, 17'-. logical, [8l, ion; 

nceptual 

totality <>f". 1 q 1 ; 
rational, [95, $69; potential, 



216; confused, 217; intensive, 
218; and being, 386. 

Time, 3, 4, 44, 140; all-compre- 
hending, 26; determinations, 
47; relations, 78; limitations, 
90; lapsing and obliterating, 
no; subjective consciousness 
of, 117; objective, 117; in- 
stants of, 175 ; mutations, 281 ; 
moments of, 282 ; ever lapsing, 
284, 341 ; form of inner sense, 
248; objective, 264. 

Touch, 278; sense of, 178. 

Transcendentalism, hypotheti- 
cal, 142. 



U 



Units, physical, 2 ; monadic, 9 : 
changeless, r8; autonomous, 
160; secondary, 161; inte- 
grant, 168; chemical, 294; 

ultimate, 297, 353; inert, 298: 
elementary, 338; organic, 354, 

Unity, 24, 169; synthetic, 221, 

2 5 5- 

Universals, 12, 51, 53, 55; com- 
prehensive, 20; conceptual, 

54; 187, 190; conceptual, 

199. 

Universe coherent, ^^; percep- 
tible, 55; transphenomenal, 
63 ; extra-conscious, 118, 126: 

ordered, 186; perceptual, 

208; perceptible, 262. 



Validity, subjective, 46; objec- 
tive, 46; universal, 46, 47, 48, 

93; problematic, 157; 

objective and universal. 222, 
256 ; objective, 260. 

Value, moral. 400. 

Variations, chance. 339, 340, 347. 

Velocity, 265: growing, 278. 

Verification, incontestable, 71; 
experimental, 1 18; prac- 
tical, [84; rigorous scientific, 

r .37?- 
Vitality, 107, 160, [6i, 171; 

„ '79. 3 ; ! 5- 33 i- 394- 

\ ' >li1 K >n, 6 1 . 67, 83, [27, [33, 
1 \<> . productive, 29; indi- 
vidual, 82; universal, 82; 



462 



Index 



rational, 144; mental, 145; 

212, 224; synthetical, 263 ; 

creative, 386; efficiency of, 
400. 
Vries, De, 161; 353. 



W 



Weismann, 161; 353. 

Whole, consistent, 234; unitary, 
309, 436; ordered, 388; sen- 
tient 310; indiscerptible, 392. 

Will, 4, 144; universal, 10, 29; 

omnipotent, 67; 383, 385, 

405; omnipotent, 206; actuat- 
ing, 388; creative, 405, 424. 

Work, 273, 282, 283; mechani- 
cal, 273, 284, 285; perceptible, 
278; external, 290. 

World, external, 2, 50, 51, 81, 
88; intelligible, 30, 65, 89, 
126; teeming, 35; noumenal, 
44, 103; sense-transcending, 
50; conceptual, 50; of ideas, 
50; of sensorial presentations, 
51; archetypal, 52; construc- 
tion, 66 ; microcosmic, 69 ; rev- 
elation, 71 ; common-sense, 72; 
of consciousness, 88; sense- 
revealed, 108, 155; objective 



time and space, 117; percep- 
tual, 119; known, 126; outside, 
135; fabric , 176; percep- 
tible, 186, 302, 307, 339, 358, 
361 ; great outside, 188; trans- 
individual, 196; extra-con- 
scious, 196, 242, 412 ; external, 
202 ; perceptual, 202, 203, 204, 
208; cognitively revealed, 202 ; 
ghostly, 207 ; phenomenal, 210, 
234, 252, 256, 366; thought- 
woven, 219; noumenal, 219; 
220, 252; steadfast and or- 
derly, 234; of psychic pheno- 
mena, 239; of sense, 248; of 
thought, 248; intelligible, 256; 
transphenomenal, 262; physi- 
cal, 266; mechanical, 300, 301 ; 
stuff, 301, 346; transitory, 405; 
memory constituted, 415; airy, 
430; signalized, 433; sense- 
awakened, 443. 

Words, 92 ; apprehended, 

191. 

Worth, sentient and intellectual, 
381; qualitative, 381, 389; 
existential, 381; rational and 
ethical, 397; super-individual, 
413; concentrated, 421; of 
body and mind, 421. 



I JAN 3C 1907 






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